Community threatens to vote against PDP candidates over demolitions of houses

Idahosa Moses

 

The People of Oke-Oroma Community, Ikpoba Okha Local Government Area of Edo State, have threatened to vote against the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party in the March 11 House of Assembly election, following the recent demolition of their houses by the state government.

The people who gave the threat during a protest in Benin City described the reconciliatory move by Governor Godwin Obaseki allegedly aimed at soliciting votes for candidates of the party as ‘medicine after death’.

Speaking on behalf of the group, Imaho Vincent, said the government has sent several politicians to appeal to them and solicit their votes for his party’s candidates in the March 11 House of Assembly election, vowing that they would not yield to their request.

“Obaseki has started sending his people to beg us. They have been coming to the community kneeling, saying it was all mistake destroying our houses, our ancestral homes including the ones that haven’t been completed.

“Over 10,000 houses were destroyed even when the court granted an interlocutory injunction stopping the government not to destroy our houses, they violated the court order and still destroyed our houses.

“They are begging us now to vote for them and PDP for the forthcoming House of Assembly elections.

“We have told them we aren’t going to vote for them. They said they were misled by one commissioner.

“On that, we have said if it was a mistake, they should sign an agreement with us that they have left the land for us. They should also go to the public and announce that they have left our land for us otherwise we are not going to vote for PDP.

“We are going to vote them out because power belongs to the people. We were the ones that voted for them before and we vote them out now. We don’t need PDP again. We don’t need them at all.

“We can vote for any other political party certainly not PDP because of what they came to do in Oke-Oroma. We have said PDP is dead in Edo State”, Vincent said.

Also speaking, Mrs Osayamon Oviawe, alleged that the government destroyed more than 10,000 houses in the community.

She said that the demolition affected three of her houses, including her family members’ houses.
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“When they came begging, we chased them away. We told them we are not voting for PDP and that we are voting for any other party but not PDP. When they were destroying our houses, they didn’t remember our votes.

“Let them sign an agreement with us that they would rebuild our houses and promise to leave our land for us,” Oviawe said.

The effort to get a reaction from the state Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Hon. Chris Enehikhare, was not successful.

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