Asue Ighodalo, the winner of the Peoples’ Democratic Party’s governorship primary in Edo State, has said he’s not bothered by a parallel election held by a separate faction of the party.
On Thursday, Philip Shaibu, the deputy governor of Edo, won a parallel primary organised at his residence in Benin.
However Ighodalo, in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday, said no one should seek validation after going contrary to the guidelines set down by the party.
“Regarding the consequential effect of what happened somewhere else in town, the party has strong internal mechanisms for dealing with things like this and the party will deal with it in all fairness. I don’t think that anybody should just wake up and do something contrary to what the party has set down and seek to get that validated.
“We are not in the jungle and we are not in the 18th century where everything was by push and force. I am not losing any sleep over this as there is a lot of work to be done now.
“I suspect that for many people, it is convenient to set a narrative to distract and remove from the issues. I also have said this many times before, when you look at all of the aspirants, there are many more people that are closely related to governor Obaseki and even friendlier to governor Obaseki than myself. I never understood why this thing of being the governor’s candidate was put on my head.
“But you know, as far as that may go, I don’t think it’s a problem anymore. I have managed to reach out to the people of Edo for them to know who I am, what I’m about and what I have for the people of Edo State, so, I’m quite clear and I think the people of Edo now know who I am. And what I stand for. Governor Obaseki and I have been friends for many years. I respect him tremendously and he respects me too. I have not regretted one day joining this race. I see a path for the people of Edo state.”
Speaking on the accreditation process, he said “As far as I know, I think the accreditation process went very well. You know, we went through the ward congresses where we elected three ad hoc delegates for each ward. The results from that election went up to the national working committee of the party and those results were validated and confirmed.
“Based on those results, a list of elected delegates that would take part in our primaries was confirmed by the National Working Committee of the Party, published and circulated to all the members of the party in Edo state who are involved in this process. That was the list used to accredit delegates to yesterday’s primaries and everybody on that list went into the accreditation center, got accredited and led into the venue of the primaries. That was the process. It followed the constitution of the party, the guidelines set down for the primaries election.”
Regarding the issue of accessing funds for all the infrastructural plans he has planned out for the State if elected as governor, Ighodalo said fundraising is not a new activity to him and with a trustworthy governance process, he can have access to whatever funds he needs to execute.
“I’m not too worried about finding fundings. I’ve been raising funds commercially and corporately in the last 30 years on project finances and transactions. So, I’m not worried about finding appropriate well priced cheap funding to attract infrastructural development into Edo State. There is a lot of money out there.
“There is at least 17 trillion dollars of capital out there with zero interest that we can attract if they trust the governance process. What we need is to be focused, put together a right team, be hardworking, identify the problems of the people, meet the people at their points of distress. There is so much that must be done.
“My governance model is to be fully inclusive; our government will be accessible; we will have three regional development agencies across the state so that we would look at the comparative advantage points. We would look at the soil types we have, what’s best planted where? I have promised Edo people to start this process of moving Edo State from where we are today to the place of prosperity.”
Chioma Kalu
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