By Evelyn Usman

As different political parties in Edo State gear up for the September 2024 Gubernatorial election, Labour Party leader of Edo Central Senatorial District, Chief Friday Ibadin, has charged stakeholders to galvanize efforts at ensuring that the next governor emerges from the Esan extraction.

Lamenting what he described as political marginalization and psychological oppression of the Esan extraction as governor since 1999, while addressing party stalwarts and members at the secretariat of LP’s Edo Central Senatorial District in Uromi, Edo State, at the weekend, Ibadin said the time had come to establish social justice in the political affairs of the state.

Explaining, he said, “ There exist three senatorial districts evenly distributed within the length and breadth of Edo State, namely: Edo South, North and Central.

“Our Benin brothers in Edo South have governed this state for 16 years, after the tenure of Obaseki, with the collective political and moral support of other senatorial districts that make up the state.

“Our brothers in Edo North have governed the state for eight years, also with our collective support. It is worthy to note that Edo Central Senatorial District has only produced a governor in the person of Professor Osunbor from May 29, 2007, to November 11, 2008, before he was removed by a court of competent jurisdiction.

“By the court nullifying the election that brought Professor Osunbor as a governor, it means he was never elected as a governor and therefore, a governor of Esan extraction has never been in Osadebey house since 1999”.

While noting that the deputy governor‘s seat had also rotated amongst Edo South and North senatorial districts since 1999, he said, “the question begging for answer is, what is the offence of Edo Central Senatorial District? This is the crux of the reason we are here today. It seems to me that we must as a people collectively address this political marginalization and psychological oppression”.

Lamenting, Ibadin said, “We in Edo Central contribute to the Treasury by way of payment of taxes to the Treasury but when it comes to power-sharing, we are told to take the back seat of power, with the excuse that we are not in the majority but a minority.

“Without conceding the minority assertion, in 1979, Professor Ambrose Alli, from Edo Central Senatorial District was democratically elected as the governor of the then Bendel state, which is today Edo and Delta.

“If Professor Ambrose Alli of blessed memory was democratically elected from the same zone, what has gone wrong since 1999?”, he asked.

He, however pointed out that unlike Edo, Delta State had been rotating the governorship’s seat between Delta North, Central and South, irrespective of the political party in power, an action he said had created a systemic balance and equitable sharing of state resources as well as promotion of peaceful co-existence.

He therefore asserted that “There is no better time than now to express and assert the fact that a Governor of Esan extraction in Osadebey House come 2024 is long overdue and should not be for sale.

“The current state of oppression of Edo Central Senatorial District is unacceptable because it negates the very principle and ideals upon which the Labour Party is built and it should remain the compass and torchlight of our operation as a political party.

“The Labour Party has come to redeem the deplorable state of human and infrastructural decay in Nigeria as exemplified by Peter Obi. Let me quickly add here that money-bag politics is not capacity, or the building of party structure in a political system. It is fraudulent, it corrupts the political party, and this is one of the tenets for which the Labour Party was designed to correct”

To this end, Ibadin, called on Esan sons and daughters to come out to support the power shift, boasting that “we will lobby and negotiate with our brothers in Edo South and North to see reason with their brother in Edo Central, as it is the turn of Edo central to occupy Osadebey House in 2024. We did it for them, it is time for them to reciprocate and do the same for us”.