Ahead of the September 21, 2024, governorship poll in Edo State, a stakeholder in the state, Mr Nosa Osaikhuiwu, has urged electorate to vote for the Labour Party governorship candidate, Mr Olumide Akpata.
Osaikhuiwu said the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and All Progressives Congress, APC, stranglehold on the state must come to an end, warning that failure to elect the right person might lead to further hardship in the state.
In a statement made available to Vanguard, he lamented the poverty, power outage and lack of job opportunities among others plaguing the state, saying the PDP and APC have failed to fulfill their electoral promises.
The statement reads: “The people of Edo State, aside from grappling with the current debilitating economic challenges, including hyperinflation and insecurity, are now faced with a monumental decision of electing the next governor of the state come September 21, 2024. There is no denying the fact that the state and its residents have been sojourners in economic and political wilderness where they have been subjected to undue poverty, power outage, lack of jobs, skyrocketing food prices, absence of good network of roads, and prevailing atmosphere of insecurity and lawlessness.
“However, it is under these menacing circumstances and untold hardship brought about by elected political leaders of the corrupt PDP/APC duopoly since the birth of the fourth republic that the people must now make their electoral choice for governor. The decisions they make at the upcoming polls will not only determine the future of Edo State, but the type of living conditions and quality of life or lack thereof for themselves, hence the only choice for Edo State at this critical time to redress the injustices of the past and address all the challenges facing our beloved people are the LP and Olumide Akpata.
“The various political parties in Nigeria are structured today in such a way that the parties maintain outsized roles in governments including in the appointment of ministers at federal level, commissioners at state levels, thus the parties are largely responsible for corrupting the political processes through pay to play and influence peddling schemes with APC and PDP being experts of these shenanigans unlike no other parties in Nigeria today.