More crises are brewing in the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State ahead of the 2024 governorship election, as some aggrieved members have formed a new group, Legacy Coalition.
The conveners of the group said the group would be used to counter the plans of Governor Godwin Obaseki to impose his preferred person as the next candidate of the party.
According to one of the leaders of the group who was at the meeting held at the residence of the Vice Chairman, South–South of the PDP, Chief Dan Orbih said, “The new group called Legacy Coalition is made up of members of the party before Obaseki joined them in 2020 called the Legacy Group, led by Chief Dan Orbih, some founding members of the party who had left earlier, and those who came to the PDP with the governor from the All Progressives Congress (APC).
“Prominent among the new group was a member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PDP, Hon Charles Idahosa, former State Woman Leader of the APC, Dr Esosa Amadasun, former Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon Frank Okiye, a former Commissioner in the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole administration, Comrade Orobosa Omo-Ojo, and nine former local government area chairmen among others.
“Among the legacy group were Owere Dickson Imasogie, former senatorial candidate of the PDP for Edo North, Hon Pascal Ugbmohe, two former members of the House of Representatives, Hon Ogbeide-Ihama and Sergius Ogun, the State Secretary of the party, Hilary Otsu, the State Woman Leader of the party, Tseroe and others,” he said.
Addressing the group before it went into a closed-door session, Orbih said with the victory of the PDP in the off-circle governorship election in Bayelsa state which the party won, the opposition could win election under the President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s proper planning even as he lamented that Obaseki’s coming into the party divided it.
“We have realized that we have challenges in our state, we have also realized that we have our destiny in our hands. The governor that will emerge through your support will be a governor who will not ask you to introduce yourself before he will recognize you, we are going to have a governor who has been part of us and will remain part of us, a governor who will realize the challenges we are facing as a state.
“One of the reasons why I am no longer as frequent as I used to be in Benin City is that each time I look at what we are facing today, I bleed in my heart.
“There was a PDP that was united in love before the election of Governor Godwin Obaseki, he joined us and divided the party but today, but today with the faces of those present here, I am convinced more than ever before that the way forward for PDP to retain power is to elect one among this group who will be the next governor of Edo State.”
On his part, Idahosa said the party must communicate adequately with the national leadership of the party so that they would get a fair hearing even as he criticized the crisis between the governor and deputy and faulted the leaders for not speaking out against the actions of the governor which he said has made the deputy governorship position “very unattractive.”
