Edo 2020: APC youth leader laments losing South-South

The youths representative in the All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker Committee, Ismail Ahmed said it is very disheartening for members of the party that for the first time since 2015, APC does not have a single representation in the South-South geo-political zone.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Sunday declared Obaseki, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) winner of the Edo governorship election in which he scored a total of 307,955 votes to defeat his closest rival, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the APC candidate who polled 223, 619 votes.

Reacting to the outcome of the election Ahmed said: “Our party was the only party that has representation in all the states, except PDP in 2003 when President Obasanjo wanted to contest because in 1999 PDP had no representation in the South-West.

“We had representation in all the geo-political zones since 2015 but now we have lost it. We have to work hard to regain it even though we won election fair and square in 2019, but that is something we can’t take for granted any longer”.

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He observed that: “We ran against an incumbent Governor and everybody knows the history of Edo governorship primary and there were a lot of circumstances we could not explain.

“We thought we had covered the ground fully well but there was a blindside we didn’t see. But the party has not officially done a post mortem which we intend to do this week. We are going to call a post mortem to know how far and how we find ourselves in this kind of situation.

Expressing uncertainty on the APC’s victory in the October 10 Ondo governorship election, the Youth Leader said: “As we go to Ondo State, we know that APC did not win the Presidential election in Ondo state.

“So, Ondo is also going to be very dicey but the governor has done most of the reconciliation that he needed to do based on what the reconciliation committee recommended to him.

“We are not going to take anything for granted anymore, we are not going to be sitting on our oars again, we are going to go out and fight to make sure that we retain that State (Ondo)”.