Breaking: Done and dusted! Obaseki trumps Iyamu snatches second term against the odds

By Joy Okosieme

Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, on Sunday overcame the fierce opposition of his former party, the All Progressives Congress(APC) to eke out a decisive victory in the Governorship Election in Edo State, which held on September 19.

Governor Obaseki, who contested on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), beat APC candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu with a margin of over 84,000 votes. Obaseki polled 307,955 votes to edge Ize-Iyamu who garnered 213, 619 votes into second place.
Obaseki’s victory has eased the tension in the state, which had built up following weeks of acrimonious campaigning by the PDP and APC. The election was a reprise the 2016 governorship election. Only this time around the two candidates switched parties.

The victory over the APC candidate is a major confidence boost for Obaseki, who until recently was a member of the APC. He had been forced out of the party following disagreements with Adams Oshiomhole, his predecessor in office and the suspended national chairman of the APC with whom he had shared a close personal relationship. That disagreement had snowballed into the suspension of Oshiomhole, first by the executive council of his ward in Etsako, and later by the APC, and the disqualification of Governor Obaseki from contesting the party’s governorship primary in Edo State, a development, which forced Obaseki into the arms of the PDP.

It is early days yet but it is likely from the emphatic defeat of Oshiomhole’s protege, Ize-Iyamu, that a new political order has dawned in the state with the locus of political power and influence shifting from Etsako to Oredo.