Honourable Charity Aiguobarueghian, a lawyer of over two decades and Majority Leader of the Edo State House of Assembly, represents the good people of Ovia North East 1. In this concluding part of an interview with a select group of journalists, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain and lawmaker from Ekiadolor argues that Edo State will gain nothing by voting for the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the coming September 21 governorship election considering the hardship, misery, and suffering in Nigeria presently. He adds that the opposition’s policy of deliberately peddling lies and propaganda against Dr Asue Ighodalo, PDP candidate, to tarnish his image will fail because Edo people are smarter, wiser and more politically conscious than they appear. Excerpts:

You must be worried by the large amount of deliberate propaganda and lies against your candidate, Dr Asue Ighodalo, and the PDP by the opposition. Aren’t you?

I am not worried at all. The reason is because Edo people are very smart voters. If you look at our trajectory all the time, Edo voters have always been at the forefront of progressive voting, so they know how to sieve this information and determine the wheat from the chaff. They also know how to decipher the truth from lies. Our people are very academically mobile and socially topnotch. They know how to do the right thing and all these things that people are peddling, which are palpably false, there is no one in Edo, who will vote for their propaganda. I can assure you of that because they know what is true and what is not true. And they are going to pursue that which is right and at the end of the election you will call me back and say Honourable you said so. See, wetin we gain if we vote APC? I am asking, wetin we gain if we vote APC? Nothing but hunger, hardship, insecurity, high inflation, misery. How much is a bag of garri today? What of rice, beans and other food stuff? How much is a litre of petrol? How much is the Naira to a Dollar? How much is minimum wage? So, their lies and propaganda won’t work in Edo State.

Don’t forget, APC and propaganda are Siamese Twins. Outlandish propaganda, twisting facts, telling you white is black and black is white; telling you the sun rises in the West and sets in the East contrary to the course of nature; deceiving the people is what the APC knows how to do. They did it in 2015 to Jonathan. There is nothing they didn’t say about that fine gentleman. In 2019 they did it. In 2023, they did it. Just look at what Nigerians are going through now. Have they not failed woefully? After lying and deceiving Nigerians, have they not failed? Just one year in office. Wetin we gain if we vote APC in Edo State?

So, let them continue with their propaganda and lies. They can’t market their candidate because he is too dull to govern Edo State. He won the senate seat because of a protest vote by the people to maintain the rotation policy in Esan land. Not that he was the brightest. That was why Oshiomhole supported somebody else initially. They know Monday Okpebholo is not a governor material, they know. They know he has nothing to offer, they know. Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu and the leaders of the party are just puppeteers, and Monday is the puppet. They have nothing to tell Edo people, so they have made propaganda and lying their official campaign policy, they will fail. If you go to the market women, the clergy and the civil servants, they will laugh and tell you that they are not perturbed by those falsehoods because they know them before and that these things are verifiable facts. I was at the NBA Office one day, behind the High Court in Benin and a colleague was shouting at the top of his voice that “tell me one thing that Obaseki has done?” And I just looked at the Secretariat Building that was looking at him directly and which he could also see and I said “Life must be very difficult for the blind” and he took offense that I was insulting him. How could you see such a thing and say tell me one thing? He said one and he was looking at four. He didn’t say 10. So, the people that were there started laughing at him. He made a fool of himself. People may not be talking but they know what is going on. Is it the civil servants who hear that in Anambra State here, people are protesting the implementation of N30,000 minimum wage, but have just received their own alert of N70,000 minimum wage? Will they forget that? Or are you saying that they don’t hear when people are saying that the commonwealth of Edo State would be used to care for party leaders? They know. They know that the opposition APC has nothing to offer. Have you heard Monday Okpebholo saying he would do this or that publicly to people?They know that the only way for the opposition to get to Government House is by federal might. And they also know that the Edo in us will come out and say Edo no be Lagos. Edo no be Abuja. Federal might will not work here because our people are among the most enlightened people. Our people are upwardly mobile people. When people were blaming Edo people for going abroad, I said no, it is in our character to seek what is best for us because our people are very enlightened. Nobody will tell an Edo man today that he should leave the comfort that PDP is providing at the sub-national level here and go and embrace the suffering that is at the national level. So, we are poised to win and we are going to win very big. Both in Edo South, Central and the North. We are going to win very big, you will be surprised.

But they have big names in all these places you mentioned. That must be of concern to you.

I tell you this very responsibly, they are sharing Edo State to warlords, is it not one man, one vote? No matter who is anywhere, you have just one vote. The last general election told us that the Edo person does not look at any person. In local parlance, they say “we no dey look Uche face.” We don’t look at anybody before we vote. We vote according to our conscience and according to our conviction. The last time, Obi was not here and he was not an Edo man; but our people were convinced that he was the better candidate out of the top three that contested for the Presidency. And he won overwhelmingly. He won so much so that the people who rode on his tide are senators and House of Reps members today. Some of them were not even known by the voters. So, that is how the Edo man behaves. If he believes in one thing, he takes it up from there and takes it higher. They didn’t just vote for the Labour Party, they followed it up and ensured that those votes counted. This time, the same fevour, strength and conviction that drove the Obi participation in the presidency is what is driving Dr Asue Ighodalo. Look at the caps that are being distributed by persons who are not even politicians; our people are bringing out their hard earned money in this hard economy to print caps and distribute to others as a totem of support for Asue Ighodalo. Could Ighodalo have been able to do half of the caps that are in circulation? Somebody who used his money to do caps, will he not vote on the day of election? Or somebody who accepted a cap from you and put on his own head, you know what that means? He has become a mobile advert. He is now advertising the product on his own head. I don’t know if you understand the connotation of putting something on the head and he is carrying it everywhere, letting people know that this is where I am. And by doing so he is also preaching the gospel. The mistake politicians make is that they think they are the controllers of what the outcome of voting would be. And there is nothing farther from the truth.

*The defections must be worrisome to you. Aren’t they?*

The defections are both ways. It is not as if PDP is the only party hit by defection. The other parties are equally losing members to the PDP massively. Yes, we need everyone. We don’t want anyone to leave. But this is a matter of choice and personal decisions by adults. However, I want you to know that the bulk of the majority of our voters are non-partisan. They don’t care about political parties, they care about the personality and the individual involved. And today, what is going for the PDP is that Asue Ighodalo’s governorship project is an Edo Project. And what is going for us is the excellence of the candidature of the PDP. We have the best candidate. From the primary to the moment. We had the best and most transparent primary election ever conducted in party politics. Some days before the primary, the venue was made known. I challenge the APC to tell us the venue of their primary. The delegates’ names were published in national newspapers ward by ward. So, on the day of election the delegates were gathered in a very conducive place, the Ogbe Hard Court under the full glare of national media houses to ensure that what was going on in Edo was not hidden to anybody. Everything was done in the open. Both voting, counting and announcement of results were all in broad daylight. It wasn’t anything like let’s wait for night when anything could have happened. The winner won, and losers lost. It was that energy of rightness and legitimacy that has been driving Dr Asue Ighodalo’s campaign and his followership has been massive.