Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki, the Deputy Director General of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governorship Campaign Organisation in the recent governorship election in Edo State has spoken on his party?s allegation that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) rigged the poll in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC) among other issues, adding that ?Edo State has become an unending melodrama where politics and democracy are not allowed to happen the way they should happen. However, we have a governor who understands the nuances and the dictates of the law.?

He stated that this is the first time ?we have had a situation whereby a party which somehow was bulldozed into being declared victors in an election under a hugely disputed electoral heist, which failed all democratic norms. The biggest electoral heist in the history of the country is being approached by a governor who is calling them to come and let them plan the transition seamlessly. He is calling the opposition APC, who are now coming into power, telling them to come ?let us plan and do the transition together.? Edo State is becoming something bad and a bad precedent for election.?

According to him, ?the worst is that even when and if this result is overturned, there is no way to punish the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over this changing the collective will of the Nigerian people, which has continued for so long. If there is a punishment for stealing the people?s mandate in the manner they are doing it, maybe INEC will be willing to discontinue derailing Nigerian democracy. They did it in Imo State and nobody stopped them; they increased the tempo and upped the ante, and the Ondo election is just around the corner.

?Did you see a situation where people were declared winners and those that were declared winners were behaving like people returning from a funeral? That is to say, they were like ?yes we have won the election but we are afraid to come out to celebrate it.? That was the situation in Edo when INEC wrongly declared them the winner. It was pathetic that the will of the masses was suppressed by INEC,? he stated.

On PDP?s consistent accusation against INEC and the APC of rigging the election and whether some people even within the PDP might have worked against the party, he said that ?Yes, that one is obvious that the governor fought so many battles. When you find a man who is fighting an existential battle, you will understand where he is coming from. He was in the APC but we guided him into the PDP under the guidance of the late Raymond Dokpesi. It was clear that the governor was fighting an existential battle and you can see the brigandage that is rolling out in all the places. What the governor did is what I will do; it is what every right-thinking person who wants to put us on a better path will do.

?The governor is even showing more examples despite how they stole the mandate the people of Edo State freely gave to his candidate by still telling them to ?come let us hand over to you, this is proper and this is the right way to do it?, putting aside those political issues. INEC and the APC ignored the turnout and ignored the results that were on the IReV and the BIVAS. I agree that some of the politicians came together against the government and decided to rob our state.

?A fighting government is a fighting government and that is his (Obaseki) choice but it was and still is the choice of the people to side with him. The people were on his side despite the so-called fight because whatever actions he took were for the sake of the greater good of the people. Even now, people are siding with him because he is the only one who has been paying minimum wage; he is the only one that increased the minimum wage and has never stopped paying.

?They are siding with him because he is the one fighting those who want to steal the collective patrimony of the people and if that is the reason they are fighting him, so be it. He is consistent in paying pensions and since he came in, Edo State workers can swear that they hadn?t received their salaries on the 31st of every month; it has always been four days before that 31st.

?If you will fight him because in 2021 he told you that Nigeria is printing money wrongly and as a result of that, the N400 to a dollar then, would in the next few years, cross to over one thousand naira to a dollar, so be it. If he is the man you will fight because he stands on the side of the people; if he is the man you will fight because he stands on the side of equity; if he is the man you will fight because he wanted to stop the political buccaneers that want to destroy the collective patrimony of the people of Edo and the larger Nigerians, so be it.

?But know one thing, is that it is the fight that the people recognised, it is the fight that the people supported. That is the truth of the matter. The umpire disregarded the IReV portal. It disregarded the BIVAS and went ahead to declare a result that never existed as far as the election in Edo State was concerned,? he added. (Story adapted from New Telegraph)

? Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki