By Simon Ebegbulem

BENIN—sports journalist and former Lagos State chairman of Sports Writers Association of Nigeria, SWAN, Mr. Frank Ilaboya, was among aspirants of All Progressives Congress, APC, in Edo State that picked expression of interest form to contest for the House of Assembly seat for Owan West Constituency.

Another journalist, the Edo State Commissioner for Transport, Orobosa Omo-Ojo, also picked the expression of interest form to vie for the party’s ticket to the House of Representatives for Ovia Federal Constituency and declared that inadequate legislation amid poor representation in the National Assembly had crippled the huge oil benefits of the state.

According to Omo-Ojo, legislation is one aspect that is lacking in exploring the oil-rich resources of the state. He said: “Accruals from oil wells that were criminally ceded to our neighbouring states” were under my effort as the Commissioner of Oil and Gas then, recovered. It is on record that under my stewardship, we got some of those oil wells back that were ceded out of the state since 1984.”

Speaking after picking his expression of interest form, Ilaboya said he was in the race to correct the imbalance in the representation of his people in the state House of Assembly.

He said: “I want to be used as a vehicle to touch my people. I also know that our people deserve a voice that can represent them very well. I made an independent research on why people go into that place and seemed to be performing and so many things came up but the summary of that research is that there is always a big disconnect between the representative and the people. So, I want to fill that gap and my five cardinal programmes which I would unveil later were sourced from the research.”

On his part, former Edo State chairman of Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, Philip Ugbodaga, said he was sure of getting the party’s ticket as far as there was a level playing field for all aspirants.

Ugbodaga wants to get the party’s ticket to represent Akoko-Edo Constituency II.