…Says party has learnt lesson from 2019 House of Assembly elections
Against the backdrop of allegation that the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Edo State compromised its position during the 2019 House of Assembly election resulting in the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, garnering all the 24 seats, a governorship aspirant in the 2020 governorship election in the state, Gideon Ikhine vowed that such would not happen again. According to Ikhine, “if for anything, “that House of Assembly election was a lesson we have learnt from. It won’t happen again”. Fielding questions from journalists Wednesday at a media parley in Benin, Edo State capital, Ikhine, a fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, admitted that a lot of things went wrong during the election, stressing that “If things are wrong, of course a lot of things were wrong during the last House of Assembly election to portend the end of PDP. That was one of the things that led to our consulting across the entire state, and most of those anomalies have been corrected, and will be corrected”.
While painting a picture of a totally transformed party hitherto notorious for brazen acts of impunity and imposition of candidates which caused its political misfortune in the 2015 general elections, Ikhine said “as you are aware, our congress is coming up shortly. You are journalists; I want you to be very careful to follow the story. PDP has since thrown away imposition and impunity”. Affirming his unwavering loyalty to the PDP, he said “I have no other party to go to. PDP remains my party”.
Speaking on his motivation for seeking the office of governor, Ikhine said “I have a vision that one day the dark cloud over Edo State will be taken off once and for all and we will never have to look back. I have a vision for the people, and when you have a vision, what drives your vision is passion. And if you are not passionate about your people, you can’t rule them”. The former project engineer at Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, believed “the time has come in this state for us to re-engineer ourselves and tell ourselves the truth. If you have not built anything in your life, you can’t build a people. If you have not created anything, you can’t create wealth. We have come to a point whereby we sit down and decide how we want to run the state. That is why we came up with the mantra – Edo 2020 Restoration. We must restore all that had been destroyed. We can’t have a good economy if we don’t have good infrastructure. I took a drive round the whole of GRA, (Government Reserved Area) and it’s very painful you won’t see a single drainage in the whole of GRA in Benin, the seat and the power of government. We’ve gone round the entire state; we’ve seen what needs to be done, and we’ve seen what needs to be fixed. So, Restoration 2020 is a must”.
