Ahead of the September 21 Edo State gubernatorial elections, a former deputy governor of Edo State, Philip Shaibu declared his support for the opposition, All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Monday Okpebholo.
Speaking at the 2024 Father’s Day celebration at Saint Paul’s Catholic Church in Benin City, the immediate past deputy governor said since the race began with three “homeboys” – himself, Okpebholo, and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party (LP), his preferred choice from the remaining homeboys, since he has dropped out of the race would be Okpebholo.
“I will support a homeboy, I came into politics to contest as the governor of Edo State because I need government to return to homeboy – people that understand our plight, people that understand what the people are feeling. Even the United Nations talks about the need for assessment. We don’t want outsiders, we have experimented, with outsiders and it’s not working, so this time around, we want homeboy,” he said.
“Today I came in as a homeboy, we have only two homeboys in the major political parties in Edo State. One is in labour, and one is in APC, and I choose to follow another homeboy in the APC. The man they are parading in the PDP is an outsider, and we have also agreed that no more godfatherism in Edo, so the man the PDP is trying to portray in Edo now is the godson of Obaseki, and there is no way godsons will now be governor of Edo.”
Shaibu insists that his support for the opposition is not anti-party, saying that even Governor Obaseki was partly PDP and Labour Party during the last elections.
“The governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki says that everybody has the right to support whoever he wants to support, but he forgot also that he doesn’t have the right to stop anybody from whom he wants to support,” he said.
