Edo guber: Ex-Deputy Gov Philip Shaibu dump PDP candidate, back opposition candidate

Philip Shaibu, a former deputy governor of Edo State, has declared his support for the opposition’s All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Monday Okpebholo, in Edo’s governorship election on September 21.

According to Shaibu, the governorship election started with three homeboys: himself, Okpebholo, and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party.

“I will support a homeboy. I came into politics to contest as the governor of Edo State because I need the government to return to homeboys – people who understand our plight, people who understand what the people are feeling. Even the United Nations talks about the need for assessment. We don’t want outsiders, we have experimented with outsiders and it’s not working. So, this time around, we want homeboy,” he said.

“Today, I came in as a homeboy. We have only two homeboys in the major political parties in Edo State. One is in labour, and one is in APC, and I choose to follow another homeboy in the APC. The man they are parading in the PDP is an outsider, and we have also agreed that no more godfatherism in Edo. So, the man the PDP is trying to portray in Edo now is the godson of Obaseki and there is no way godsons will now be governor of Edo.”

The former deputy governor was speaking on the sidelines of the 2024 Father’s Day celebration at Saint Paul’s Catholic Church in Benin City, the Edo State capital. He was among the altar servants for the main mass.

Shaibu insisted that since he had dropped out of the race, his preferred choice from the remaining homeboys in Okpebholo. He noted that Edo governor, Godwin Obaseki has said everyone was free to choose who to support in any election, the reason he has come out publicly to back the APC governorship candidate in the election despite his PDP membership.

He stressed that his support for the opposition is not anti-party, adding even Governor Obaseki in the last election, was partly PDP and Labour Party.

“The governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki says that everybody has the right to support whoever he wants to support, but he forgot also that he doesn’t have the right to stop anybody from whom he wants to support,” he said.

“But I take one part from what he said, we all have the right to support whom we want to support, so it’s my right to decide who I want to support.”