The Director of Operations, Edo North Campaign Management Council of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for the September 21, 2024 governorship election in Edo State, Mr Jimoh Ijegbai, has ruled out insinuation that the federal might will decide the outcome of the poll.
Ijegbai, who coordinates Asue Ighodalo’s campaign for the PDP candidate in the senatorial district, assured that no result would be written elsewhere apart from the results collated and announced at the polling units in the entire state.
According to him, the electorate’s choice would be upheld at the end of the election, urging those relying on the elusive federal might concept through which fictitious results would be written and announced to perish the thought.
In a chat with journalists in Benin City on Tuesday, Ijegbai said PDP has been campaigning and meeting the people to vote for its candidate, Ighodalo, who he said “is very sellable”, while some members of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), were relying on ‘federal might’.
He assured that President Bola Tinubu, whom he noted, possessed reputable democratic credentials would not allow that to happen under his watch.
While reiterating that democracy had come to stay in Nigeria, Ijegbai noted that the former governor of the state, now a senator, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, won elections in the state while in opposition to the federal government and he had also been an advocate of free and fair election and therefore would not be a party to any arrangement that would compromise the credibility of the electoral process.
“The President Tinubu that I know was among those who fought for democracy, who fought the military to ensure that Nigeria regains democracy, we got it and he was a beneficiary, he was the governor of Lagos State and today fate has thrown him up as the president of Nigeria.
“Don’t also forget that during the time of Senator Oshiomhole as governor of state, it was late Umaru Yar’Adua that was president and then President Goodluck Jonathan, there was a credible election; free and fair during his second term. Oshiomhole is the mantra of one-man-one-vote, I don’t see in 2024 how one person can sit down and say we are going to write the result.
“Eternal Vigilance is ours in the PDP. We are going to ensure that from day one, from the pre-process to the election proper and post-election, we are going to be very vigilant and see how a party that is not campaigning, how a party that has no credible and sellable candidate will come out to say we are going to write results.
“All I know is that right from the unit level, which is the base of the pyramid in the electoral process, we are going to be there and immediately the results are declared and announced and transmitted to the next level, we will follow it up. I do not know how anybody can think that you are not bringing materials to the field, you will just sit down and announce results.
“That is a recipe for a crisis and I don’t think that Tinubu will like his name to be soiled in 2024 over an election. The will of the people must prevail. Edo State is too enlightened for that and Nigeria has grown beyond that, technology has come to stay in our electoral process that no one person can sit down somewhere and just write results.
“I was council chairman under Oshiomhle and he made us understand that there is nothing like federal might, what you have is the local might, the people belong to a local government and they are from a state,” he reiterated.
Ijegbai advised that Nigeria should copy from South Africa, which had been having seamless elections without resorting to unnecessary litigations.
“President Tinubu just came from the inauguration of the South African president. In South Africa, they do elections and you don’t see anybody going to the tribunal or filing cases because the processes are transparent and the President should learn from that and be able to say look, we want to reduce the acrimony that happens in conducting elections. With the democratic credentials he parades, he cannot turn around and say we must take Edo by force,” he further assured.
On the possible shocker of the Labour Party (LP) in the election, as it happened in the 2023 general elections, Ijegba said: “They are not the same scenario. What happened in the 2023 election was that Nigerians were dissatisfied with both the APC and the PDP; they needed a third force that was going to come and correct the anomalies in our system.
“It was the Obidient Movement that did it and supported Obi; there is no Labour Party in Edo State, in the state House of Assembly election, how many seats did they win? A party that has two state chairmen, a party that is badly divided from the top down? How can you entrust the fate of Edo into such a party? LP doesn’t stand a chance at all in this election”, he stated.