By Oladipo Airenakho
Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode has been appointed Chairman of the National Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress for the gubernatorial election holding in Edo State on September 10, 2016.
APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, who inaugurated the Council in Benin City last weekend, said the party would win the election with ease, based on the good records of the incumbent Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.
Chief Oyegun who said the election “is important, crucial and will be a very great signpost” for the party, noted that Edo State had been cornered into a private property by a few individuals in the past before the APC Government dismantled their structures.
“I want to thank you in spite of the relatively short notice. You have all turned up in such large numbers. I am sure that comes from recognition that on your part that the election we are preparing for is important, crucial and will be a very great signpost,” he said.
Chief Oyegun charged the campaign Council, made up of very eminent leaders of the party, each one specially chosen for this assignment, not only to work towards delivering Edo State, but to ensure that the margin of victory tells the whole story.
“So, it is an election that is important to us that we win very convincingly, not just win, but win convincingly. So, my charge to you is to go out there in coordination, close working relationship with the local election committee to strategize, to raise the resources, to talk to whosoever is necessary to talk to, some of the details of which, of course, we will discuss at a very first meeting to ensure that the kind of victory that our party deserves is in fact recorded.”
He told the Council that the larger vision of the party after delivery Edo State would be to “venture out to bring home our brothers in the South East and in the South South to join this great crusade to salvage our nation, to establish a new way of doing things, to establish new ethics, to let our people know that there is a difference between right and wrong.”
Responding on behalf of members of the National Campaign Council, the Chairman of the Council and Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode, who was represented by Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El Rufai said, thanked the party for giving them the responsibility to manage the campaign that will lead to the election of Godwin Obaseki as the next Governor of Edo State.
“This is an onerous responsibility, bearing in mind the desperation of that dying party to wake up and get some life. They will use every means to come back to continue the looting that they started in Edo State.
“However, our job has been made easy by the fact that our brother, Governor Adams Oshiomhole has done such incredible work in this State that as you said even the blind, deaf and dumb can see and hear. The difference between the PDP and the APC is the difference between night and day.”
In a vote of thanks, Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State commended the APC national chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun and members of the National Campaign Council for attending the meeting at a short notice said.
“In 2007, we didn’t have a Councilor in this State, and Mr. Fix it was fixing and unfixing everything. Working together, we unfixed him, and since then, we have been in control. And as we speak, we have 22 out of 24 members of the House of Assembly elected on our party platform,” Oshiomhole recalled.
According to him, there was no reason to worry, recalling that in his last election, the party won in all the 18 local government areas on account of what he identified as evidence of governance and government presence in each of the 192 wards across Edo State.
“So, we are confident given the fact that since then, we have done even more.”
Membership of the national campaign council is drawn from serving governors and deputy governors, former governors and deputy governors, serving ministers, senators, members of the House of Representatives and other prominent APC members across the country.
The inaugural meeting of the Council which held immediately after its inauguration was attended by Imo State Governor and Chairman of the APC Governors Forum, Owelle Rochas Okorocha; Comrade Adams Oshiomhole (Edo), Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano), Simon Lalung (Plateau), Nasir el-Rufai (Kaduna) (Co-Chairman) and Mohammed Abubakar (Bauchi).
The governors of Niger, Nasarawa, Jigawa, Borno, Kwara, Oyo and Kogi were represented by their Deputies.
It was also attended by the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, Omooba Olagunsoye Oyinlola, Mr. Segun Oni, APC National Deputy Chairman, (South); Senator Osita Izunaso, Dr. Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour, Mr. Hilliard Ettah, APC National Chairman, South South, among others.
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