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The ongoing Edo State governorship election campaign which has already been adjudged as the dirtiest in the history of the state, this week, took a further dip into muddy waters with the smear campaign extending to the election regulatory body.

The attack on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC came by way of salvos on one of the probable officials that could be deployed by the commission to preside over the election.

Mainly involved in the smear campaigns are the two leading parties in the state, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and the All Progressives Congress, APC who incidentally, have also recruited proxy parties to do their biddings against their rivals.

The smear campaign opened on Monday with the PDP bringing to the public the quiet apology by the APC over the claim the previous week that Pastor Osagie-Ize Iyamu, the APC candidate had been endorsed by the Benin Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (BENCCIMA).

The APC campaign had been forced on Sunday, to issue a quiet apology in which it blamed a low-ranking campaign staff for misconstruing the chamber’s interaction with Ize-Iyamu into an endorsement. Crusoe Osagie, Governor Godwin Obaseki’s spokesman in a statement on Monday urged other groups whose names have been used by the APC to conjure endorsements that were never given, in the party’s desperate bid to market and re-brand their gubernatorial candidate who is heavily burdened with credibility crisis, to speak up.

“By challenging APC’s fabricated endorsement, BENCCIMA has defended its rule book and its set objectives, and has sent a strong message to identity thieves like the APC, that you cannot fool the people all the time.” The APC retorted sharply on Wednesday when it brought the issue of the missing Edo State commissioner for arts and culture, Osaze Ero-Osemwingie as its main bullet.

Ero-Osemwingie, the commissioner for arts and culture has been out of the country since last year having reportedly been apprehended in a European country over alleged transgressions. On Wednesday, the APC campaign turned the issue into an armour in a statement authored by John Mayaki, Ize-Iyamu’s spokesman asking the governor to explain the absence of his commissioner since the beginning of the year.

The party made this challenge on Wednesday following what it described as the Governor’s quiet replacement of the Commissioner with the swearing-in of Mr. Lawrence Ogieva as the new Commissioner for Arts, Culture, and Diaspora Affairs. He also questioned the governor’s silence on the issue. In his response, Obaseki speaking through Osagie accused the APC of running out of steam and resorting to cheap blackmail and falsehoods in its bid to remain relevant in the ongoing electioneering campaigns.

“On a daily basis, leaders of the APC consciously churn out falsehood to attract the attention of Edo people, who have already confined their gubernatorial candidate, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, to history,” he said. “The party’s candidate and his followers have realised that their theatrics do not resonate with Edo people, hence the resort to smear campaign to dent the image of Governor Godwin Obaseki, with all manners of allegations, from the ridiculous to the absurd.”

The two sides have also fought over the outstanding court cases involving one another.

The PDP had through its publicity secretary, Chris Nehikhare raised the alarm on the alleged plot by the APC to move court cases involving one another out of Edo State to Abuja. When later in the week the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court sanctioned the move, the APC remonstrated with the PDP saying: “It is on record that the PDP for many months now have been boasting that they will use the Court to subvert the will of the People.

They know their candidate is not popular and has no single chance of winning the election, hence the only alternative is to get the mandate through the back door, reenacting the Bayelsa State travesty.”

While the two candidates and their proxies have been turning on one another, the PDP campaign chief, Chief Dan Orbih has also not relented in his attacks on Comrade Adams Oshiomhole who he has repeatedly dubbed as the godfather of the APC candidate, Ize-Iyamu.

His campaign weapon has been to use Oshiomhole’s wounding words of 2016. Speaking at Ugbegun in Esan West Local Government Area on Monday, Orbih salvaged Oshiomhole as double mouthed saying: “He also told us that the pastor is not fit to rule this state; he also told us that he cannot be trusted with public funds.

“To me, all what he said about his candidate has not changed. How can he make a u-turn and start telling Edo people to vote for that same man?

Edo people are not fools; that is why I want to say that Oshiomhole is not a magician; he cannot turn white to black and black to white.”

Why Igini May Not Be Involved In Edo Polls On Thursday, the smear campaign extended to former civil rights activist and Resident Electoral Commissioner for Akwa Ibom State after the APC campaign accused him of a secret dalliance with Governor Obaseki.

The APC in a statement issued by Mayaki alleged that Mike Igini met with Obaseki in the governor’s private residence where a deal to rig the election was allegedly plotted. Igini in a swift response made available to Saturday Vanguard denied the report saying he passed through Edo State to Delta State for a funeral ceremony.

The INEC REC clarified that he passed a night in Benin last Sunday on his way to his home state, Delta State, having travelled by road, specifically Aniocha North, to attend the funeral ceremony (23rd to 25th) of the Mother of a long time close friend.

Igini who said he passed the night in Benin had since returned to Lagos and not in Benin on the night of 25th that Mayaki authored report claimed lgini was seen in company of other two persons to meet Gov. Obaseki. “Is it possible for an individual to be at two different locations i.e Benin and Lagos the same night?

He also added that ordinarily, he would not have responded to such “barefaced lies, very absurd and nonsensical insinuations, having heard worse things in the past over elections, where political actors/election riggers that have little or no regard in their utterances for the institutional pillars of democratic society have continued to destroy institutions of state and personal reputation that people have built over the years.”

Meanwhile, Saturday Vanguard has learnt that the focus on Igini may have been prompted by insinuations that he could be deployed as one of the federal commissioners to supervise the election. Igini had won popular acclaim among independent stakeholders in the country upon his efforts in Akwa Ibom State in the 2019 General Election.

Sources close to the development in Edo State told Saturday Vanguard that the effort of the attack on Igini may have been to preclude him from being one of those to be deployed to the state given that a party in the election has already named him to be in cahoots with a rival

SOURCE: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/08/edo-election-campaign-turns-to-smear-war/