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Okowa denies sponsoring militants to disrupt Edo election

By Hendrix Oliomogbe (Asaba), Alemma-Ozioruva Aliu (Benin City) and Uchenna Ezeh (Lagos)
11 September 2016   |   1:56 am
The Delta State government has described as baseless, unfounded, spurious and tendentious, a statement credited to Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole, accusing Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, of deploying militants to disrupt the now postponed Edo governorship election.
Ifeanyi Okowa

Ifeanyi Okowa

The Delta State government has described as baseless, unfounded, spurious and tendentious, a statement credited to Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole, accusing Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, of deploying militants to disrupt the now postponed Edo governorship election.

The election, earlier slated for yesterday, is now slated for Wednesday, September 28, 2016.The state Commissioner for Information, Mr. Patrick Ukah, in a statement in Asaba, yesterday, said Oshiomole’s latest outburst was consistent with his favourite pastime of heating up the polity, with unguarded utterances and wild allegations.

He said: “We vehemently reject this accusation as alarmist in conception, reckless in delivery, puerile in content and false in facts and, so, fit only for kindergarten’s “tales by moonlight.”

The statement described Okowa as a peace loving Nigerian, who has never, and will not engage in any activity inimical to law and order.It added: “It needs to be reiterated that the exalted Office of the Governor is one that demands decorum and maturity. Therefore, those who are privileged to occupy such offices, need to exercise restraint in their public conduct and utterances. Governor Okowa has committed himself to raising the standard of governance in all ramifications and, therefore, will not descend into “gutter politics.”
 
Meanwhile, the gubernatorial ambition of the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Osagie Ize-Iyamu, yesterday, received a boost as the candidate of KOWA Party, Thompson Osadolor and a coalition of other parties agreed to support Ize-Iyamu for the re-scheduled election.
   
Osadolor had told The Guardian few weeks ago that the minor parties were planning a coalition to give the big parties a serious fight.In another development, a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University, Sylvester Odion Akhaine, has cautioned the Nigerian Police and the Department of State Services (DSS), for what he described as “raising of false security alarm in Edo State,” thereby forcing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to postpone the poll, adding that the act “Is not only despicable, but condemnable.”

In a statement made available to The Guardian, Akhaine said, “The intrusion of centralised organs of the state into the politics of Edo State, through false flag operation, signals the death of civil society and the intrusion of authoritarianism into the Nigerian polity.”

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