Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki has described the reported infraction between him and his predecessor, Adams Oshiomhole, as fake.
Obaseki, who also spoke on his second term bid, said whether he gets a second term or not depends on God and the people of Edo State.
The governor, who addressed reporters on Sunday after a meeting of the Progressive Governors’ Forum in Abuja, said: “There is no infraction between me and the National Chairman of the party. It is all in the press. It is all fake news.”
There have been reports of a crisis between the governor and National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and this got to a head when the governor failed to show up for the annual Okpekpe in May.
However, President Muhammadu Buhari reportedly intervened in the crisis last week, bringing the two together. Sources close to the governor confirmed the President’s intervention, saying “the President called them and they have been talking. I can tell you that there is nothing serious going on between them really”.
About his second term bid, Obaseki said: “My second term is left to God and the people of Edo State. At the end of the day, the people will decide, depending on how much they see that we have added value to their lives.
“As you know, we are the only APC state in the Southsouth and Southeast. So, we want to be a flag bearer for what APC should represent as a party.
“I have things like industrialisation, ensuring economic growth by building production centres, industrial parks and ensuring that government serves as an enabler. That is key for us. So, we have been spending time improving the business climate so that people can do business easily. Hopefully, that will have a snowball effect on the region.
“I promised to create 200,000 jobs in our first four years in office. As at the last count, we have exceeded 90,000 and we are still counting. As you are aware, these jobs are coming in from various aspects of industries, technology, ICT, education, the services, and now, we are investing in production hubs where we bring electricity, water and security into specific locations and invite people to come and set up in those particular locations.
“What we are doing, which is different and which we are very excited about, is education reform, particularly basic education reform. We have trained over 10,000 teachers in our basic education system, and introduced technology. Now, we can track when teachers are in class, we can track when students are in class and for about 200,000 kids in our basic schools, we have supplied them almost one million books.” (The Nation)
