Deputy Director General of Asue/Ogie People?s Democratic Party (APC) Edo 2024 Campaign Management Council, Dr. Pedro Obaseki has said that the All Progressives? Congress (APC) in Edo state is trying to put fear in and hound the people of Edo State to ensure that their ?perpetually unelectable? candidate wins the upcoming Edo Guber elections.

Obaseki said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday, where he also said that the police in Edo State have shown so much partiality towards the APC that the police has morphed into an armed wing of the party in the state.

This came after the PDP was noticeably absent from the signing of the peace accord ahead of the September 21 elections, after they claimed that the police were showing preferential treatment towards the APC.

Obaseki, when asked about this situation, said, ?This is also a situation where we?ve raised alarms that the APC have procured numerous police uniforms so as to dress as policemen on the election day. And to just buttress that, two days before the coming of the IG to Benin three days ago, a contestant in the gubernatorial primaries of the APC, Mr. Blessing Agbomere was paraded with his APC hoodlums where all of them were wearing all the APC caps. But he was dressed particularly in an official police uniform with the rank of a CSP, and making spurious statements, statements that are designed to disturb public peace. We had to bring this to the notice of everybody since the police have refused to do anything.

He then gave instances in which members of the PDP in Edo had suffered unfair treatment from the police as he claimed, ?In the last three weeks, the Nigerian police, in gestapo style, have busted the homes of chieftains of the PDP, carted them away to unknown locations in total violations of their rights and not stopping there. The police can arrest anybody if they so wish, but they cannot take then to places where nobody knows and hold them illegally, unlawfully.

?So, we were screaming that first we will sign, but the police must come to the table with clean hands. Anybody who wants to come to must come to it with clean hands. So, the police has morphed into an armed wing of the APC in the state. So we are scared that if we sign a peace accord, we will be endorsing the very very unethical positioning of the police as an armed wing.?

Obaseki then said, ?We cannot at this point allow the APC to see themselves above the law- that is not true, we won?t let that happen. Edo people are not scared, we are ready for the elections because we are the ones on ground. So, they are the ones trying to hound our people, disrespect the rule of law. That is the situation here because they know that they have a perpetually unelectable candidate.?

He then said that it was important for the PDP to bring all the happenings to the public domain, as he claimed the police were not working on punishing the defaulters, as he said, ?What, by this action, we are doing, we are bringing into the public domain the critical very existential issues surrounding the elections in Edo State. First, we must understand that even while in Benin, the Inspector General of Police stands on the podium and at the preliminary meetings of that day, he declared that some persons have been brazenly arrested in Benin based on the July 18 killing of a police officer, a police officer who was killed, and even all the newspaper, I think including ARISE TV, showed APC hoodlums on Airport Road in Benin. It was even published widely on newspapers, I even saw a copy of the vanguard of that day yesterday. And these persons have remained free, they are roaming the streets, pandering and brazenly disregarding process. So we felt that it is important that we bring this to the public domain.? (AriseNews TV)

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