The Edo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that the 2024 governorship ticket of the party is open to the three senatorial districts in the state as the party would rather look for the best candidate to do the job rather than zoning the ticket.
This was just as the party counselled all the aspirants to run issue-based campaigns and avoid any form of personal attacks on other aspirants, stressing that the APC remained one family irrespective of the number of people that had shown interest to contest at the primaries.
The position of the party was stated by the secretary of APC in Edo, Mr. Lawrence Okah, shortly after he received one of the aspirants, Mr Kassim Afegbua, who was at the party secretariat to inform members of the State Working Committee (SWC) of his intention to contest for the APC ticket.
Okah said the party would do all in its capacity to place merit above every other consideration in the coming primaries of the party as that would guarantee success at the end of the election.
“We have asked all the aspirants to play the game according to the rules and they should avoid any utterances against any of the aspirants because at the end of the day, the party is going to pick only one and the rest will work with the one that has been picked.
“What we are looking for is capacity and the ability to deliver and that is why we said there is no zoning, that is the message,” Okah emphasised.
Speaking earlier, Afegbua told members of the SWC that by his antecedents as a fearless and upright politician, who does not shy away from facts, his candidature remained the best that could make the APC to return to Osadebey Avenue.
The spokesman to the former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, lamented what he called a disconnect between the leadership of the party and those in government
The disconnect, Afegbua added, was “caused by one of us before whom we thought will play the role of a party man but ended becoming a heartless man.
“I traveled round the state and I saw the level of decay of the road infrastructure and some other infrastructure in the area of health and education and I said no, we can do something different. There has been too much propaganda in the state in the last seven years which must stop,” he said.
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