‎Man assassinated in Benin as residents desert homes‎

By Ehichioya Steve Odion

Edo State Labour Party, LP,  has described the last Saturday's local government election as a show of shame and falls short of all known democratic standards and practices 

This was made known today by the chairman of the party, Comrade Kelly Ogbaloi while briefing journalists at the party Secretariat.

"The Edo people were denied the opportunity to exercise their franchise in electing  their representatives at the grassroots level, which is the local government. It was a rape of democracy, as the entire exercise and process was militarized and full of violence".

"Voting materials were purposely delayed from getting to the various units, more worrisome is the fact that  EDSIEC deliberately did not deploy ad-hoc staff to most of the units in places like Egor and Oredo local Government Areas, thereby giving room to hijacking of the process".

The party however, said that election materials distributed to the units by EDSIEC arrived Okada in Ovia North East local government area at about 11:00 pm on Friday 1st of September, 2023, and were forcefully taking away at gun point immediately they arrived.

They also alleged that voters were chased away by the agents of the Edo State Security Network in parts of the metropolitan local government area.

"As a party, we consider this as EDSIEC connivance with the PDP led government to hijack the process, if not why would they deliberately delay the distribution of materials till night of 1st September, 2023?

Ogbaloi said they were shocked that inspite the obvious rape of democracy, EDSIEC still went ahead to declare PDP candidates as winners and issued them certificate of return, adding that despite that their ad-hoc staff were not on ground to conduct the election in most of the units across the 18 local government area of Edo State.

"The entire exercise was hijacked as there was no voting across the polling units in the state. Therefore, the Edo State chapter of the Labour Party, entirely rejects the outcome of the purported Local Government election held on Saturday, 2nd of September, 2023, and call on EDSIEC and its chairman, Justice James Oyomire (Rtd) to immediately withdraw the certificate of Return given to PDP candidates to save their integrity and promote democracy".