PDP ready to take over Edo in 2020, says chieftain

A People’s Democratic Party (PDP) aspirant in the forthcoming 2020 governorship election in Edo, Gideon Ikhine, yesterday said the party was prepared to take over the leadership of the state.

He said the main opposition party had resolved to “put aside its differences and work to fulfill the yearnings of the people by providing good governance.”

Ikhine, who addressed reporters yesterday in Benin City, claimed that the findings of his tour of parts of the state showed that Edo “still remains a PDP state.”

His words: “We have a great party. No other party can be like PDP. I live PDP and I breath PDP and if there is anything wrong with PDP, it is our responsibility to stay back in PDP and fix it. If you keep divorcing your wife because she does not know how to cook, you might soon end up marrying the whole city.

“It takes a responsible man to take responsibility. We chose to take responsibility for PDP. The firs step we took was to encourage most of our leaders who were disillusioned, who were forced into early retirement, as well as those who over the years chose to ignore so many things.

“As luck we have it on our side, we did not go telling them to come and vote for us. We went about telling them to rebuild PDP because if you do not have the instrument and the building to pursue your vision, you will end up borrowing foams and beds to sleep in another person’s house.

“That is why you see a lot of people moving from one party to the other but we chose to speak to our leaders and almost of them came back to PDP.

“After that, we chose that we were going to go round the entire wards in the state to ascertain the status of our party members and to know whether PDP is in existence having been in an opposition for over 10 years. But what surprised us in this journey was that we discovered that Edo State is still 100 per cent PDP.”