By Simon Ebegbulem

BENIN CITY—GOVERNORSHIP aspirant of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Edo State, Gen.Charles Airhiavbere, (retd) yesterday said he had  no regret dragging Governor Adams Oshiomhole to the Tribunal when he ran against him as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in 2012.

He however, lamented that though the PDP hierarchy chickened out of the legal battle after it agreed to go to court to contest the result of the election, but that he decided to fight alone to prove he was not a coward before the PDP leaders.

Airhiavbere who declared that Oshiomhole was a very close friend despite the event of 2012, said  “after the election there were strategies, the final stage  was that we were going to court. And without consultations, blatant lies at the leadership level, very high impunity, immediately after the election the leaders of the PDP abandoned the next stage of the operation without any reason. For the first time I met then President Goodluck Jonathan one-on-one and he said he did not give instructions that we should not go to court. So, I went to court all alone because I had the muscles and the capacity to go to court. Even though the Supreme Court described me as an orphan at that level, I was not the one who went to the Supreme Court. The Action Congress of Nigeria, CAN, as at that time and the governor took the decision to go to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeal.

“ We all knew what happened but my advice to political parties is that they must respect their candidates. They must respect the collective decision and when there is need to reverse it, it must be discussed generally at all levels. That is why this is called democracy and that was what I wanted to prove. Unfortunately so many people got hurt in the process, some also got rich in the process and today I have no regrets.”.

On the forthcoming primaries of the APC, Airhiavbere asserted that “I don’t even believe there is any other aspirant in the APC, I have not seen one. As an Army General if I don’t know how to access my competitors then I have a problem. There is no preferred candidate by the governor; I contested against him I should be the preferred candidate. And for the primaries, it is going to be free and fair and I will win. I am moving around meeting delegates, strategizing, I will win landslide in that  June 18  primaries.”