Attack on Edo ACN Secretariat: Okosun clears air

By SIMON EBEGBULEM

BENIN — Edo State Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, weekend, denied allegations of substitution of councillorship candidates in Oredo and Egor Local Government Areas of the state ahead of the April 20 local government elections in the state, describing the allegation as an attempt to rubbish the leadership of the party by those who failed to impose their stooges on the people.

Some youths of Oredo had, last Friday, stormed the party’s secretariat, protesting the substitution of the councillorship list in five wards of the council after primaries had been conducted last week.

Four vehicles, including one belonging to the state chairman of the party, Mr. Thomas Okosun, were destroyed before a combined unit of mobile policemen and soldiers arrived to disperse the youths.

Vanguard learnt that trouble started in Oredo, when ACN chairmanship candidate in the council, Osaro Obazee, discovered that the forms issued to chairmanship candidates and councilors by  Edo State Independent National Electoral Commission, EDSIEC, was given to one of the youth leaders, Osakpanwa Eriyo instead of the chairman of the party in the council, Mr Goodluck Okparobo.

However, Okosun who denied insinuations, that he went into hiding last Friday, when the fracas broke out, said the party leadership rejected lists of councilors that were submitted without the input of all the leaders of the party in some wards. He said: “We are not imposing candidates, it was some of the leaders that brought lists cooked up in their bedrooms and expect us to accept them when other ACN leaders were not put in the picture and I said we cannot accept that.”