From: Nosa Akenzua, Asaba
The candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2020 Edo State gubernatorial election, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, has challenged the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to clear its infamous status of a “tax collector” – a despicable description it earned from the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike.
Reacting to a challenged posed by the party for him to provide evidence of goodwill from the state’s former Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, Pastor Ize-Iyamu denounced the PDP as a “fallen party in tattered rags, authoring an allegory of tax collectors and a Zacheus who must remain short of his ‘non-negotiable second term ambition.”
He asked the party to focus on its internal squabbles exacerbated by the divisiveness of Governor Godwin Obaseki who allegedly obtained the party’s ticket forcibly through a national imposition by induced tax collectors.
The statement signed by the Director of Communication and Media of Campaign Organization, John Mayaki, read: “The sun is dawning on a new era at the People’s Democratic Party. For a party that has almost successfully faded into quiet irrelevance, the saying that bad publicity is better than no publicity has come to define this new era. A fallen party, in a bid to rise again, is grabbing at anything, be it pole or straw, just to find its feet again. And then arrives Obaseki, a fodder, pole, straw, and even cash cow, furnishing this fumbling party with seeds that will only counter-productively grow detrimental discordance.”
“However, in their deadened obscurity now enlivened by the hapless Obaseki, this PDP has a strong headache: Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the APC’s Edo State gubernatorial candidate. Disturbed by the Pastor’s widespread popularity and massive acceptance among common Edo people, the PDP, running with their crippled Obaseki, is looking for just anything to lay hands on in their bid to burnish Obaseki’s waning, if not inexistent popularity. This is why they have, through a memo signed by the National Publicity Secretary, called on the illustrious Ize-Iyamu to avail them of instances of past goodwill by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. However, that singular memo has achieved something sinister and unexpected.”
