By Stephen Mmadukwem

ALL Progressives Congress, APC, governorship aspirants in Edo State have been advised to eschew politics of bitterness and aspersion but to market themselves before the electorate.

A chieftain of the party, Mr. Ogedengbe Eseosa, while reacting to statements credited to some aspirants on the alleged support of Governor Adams Oshiomhole for the aspiration of Mr. Godwin Obaseki said, “Let the governorship aspirants not conduct themselves in a manner that will reduce this contest to personality issue. Let us rather debate the issues of development, youth inclusion in governance, unemployment and the infrastructure challenge confronting us.

“Recently, one Blessing Aigbomhere alleged that billions of naira was released and job was not done under Edo State Economic Team for investment by a company. One begins to wonder if government now doles out money to companies to invest.

“This is why I said sometimes you don’t respond to all issues. However, let it be on record that at no time was any money released to the Economic Team of Edo State to give to any investor. Rather, the Economic Team, under the leadership of Mr Godwin Obaseki, has been working hard in the last few years to establish acceptable framework to make the state an investors’ haven. This has yielded a lot of results with the coming of several foreign and local firms to the state in the area of agriculture, oil and gas, power and fertiliser and expansion of capacity by existing firms.

“Mr Obaseki is a well-trained technocrat with traceable credentials in the various sectors that he has worked in the last three decades and therefore, could not be said not to be eligible to run for the governorship of the state.”