Guber Poll: Oshiomhole piles pressure on Dangote to flood Edo with rice to buy votes

…Take the rice, but vote your for your conscience, says PDP

In a desperate bid to swing victory in favour of his All Progressives

Congress (APC) candidate in the September 28 governorship election in Edo

State, Governor Adams Oshiomhole is said to have piled pressure on

Africa’s richest man and biggest rice merchant in Nigeria, Alhaji Aliko

Dangote, to make available bags of rice as well as cash with which to

“buy” votes from the electorate. The APC candidate, Mr Godwin Obaseki, has business links with Alhaji

Dangote and has been instrumental to Dangote’s friendship with Oshiomhole

as well as to plans by Dangote to invest in the State.

Sources close to the development said that Dangote had reluctantly

succumbed to Oshiomhole’s substantial pressure and would, in the next few

days, donate to the APC tens of thousands bags of rice, which would be

distributed to bribe Edo electorate ahead of the election.

The opposition Peoples Democratic Pay (PDP) in Edo said it was not worried

that the development could undermine the integrity of the electoral

process and set the State on a retrogressive course because it believes

the people now know better. PDP’s Publicity Secretary, Mr Chris Nehikhare, when contacted, said “if

the feelers are true, then we owe it a duty to counsel Edo people not to

sell their birthright for a mess of porridge.  We encourage them to

collect the rice from APC but vote for their conscience.

“Thousands of Edo electorate who had already seen the light in the SIMPLE

agenda of the PDP candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, should remain

focused on the promises and prospects of a greater and glorious Edo State,

which Ize-Iyamu represents and exemplifies. “They should collect the rice because there is hunger in the land, which

was caused by the directionless leadership of the APC-led Federal

Government that has plunged the nation into avoidable economic recession,

and go ahead to use their vote to punish  the APC by rejecting it at the

poll.” Reports have it that  a 50 kilogramme bag of rice, which is the commonest

staple food in Nigeria, has gone out of the reach of the ordinary man,

with the price rising from about N8,000 to about N22,000 since the APC

administration of President Muhammadu Buhari took over power.

Meanwhile, sources said that Dangote had expressed reservation about

investing more money as requested by Oshiomhole into the Edo APC

governorship project. Dangote was said to have told Oshiomhole that intelligence reports at his

disposal indicated that the PDP is by far the favourite party among the

Edo electorate. But Oshiomhole, according to credible information, pleaded with Dangote to

avail the APC and its candidate of his critical contribution as it would

go a long way in helping to redirect the minds of the “hungry” people to

vote for Obaseki. The business mogul was said to have shifted ground after placing it on

record that Oshiomhole is the problem with the APC and its governorship

candidate in the State. It was learnt that Oshiomhole disagreed with the suggestion that he is the

problem, explaining that the problem is the transferred anger and

aggression by the people due to the inability of the Federal Government to

arrest the growing hunger in the country. He was said to have assured Dangote that he knows how to “get” Edo voters

as he has set a machinery in motion to make sure that the APC wins.

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