Billionaire Bishop Okpebholo donates three-storey office to Labour Party in Uromi, Edo State

A massive three-storey building in Uromi has been donated to Labour Party in Edo State for four years, to serve as a secretariat to the Esan North East local government area (LGA) chapter of Labour Party (LP), Edo State.

The building is located in the highbrow area of Uromi town, headquarters of the LGA.

The donation was made on Sunday by Bishop. Mathew Okpebholo, Head Pastor of the Uromi-based Archbishop Benson Idahosa Cathedral of the Church of God Mission Inc., one of the pioneering Pentecostal churches in Nigeria, founded and once led by the late charismatic and international preacher, Archbishop Benson Idahosa.

Speaking on the premises of the mansion, Bishop Okpebholo, flanked by his wife, eulogised the LP’s national chairman, Barrister Julius Abure, for his vision and commitment in heading a national movement, which had thrown up Mr Peter Obi and Dr Yusuf Baba-Ahmed, as presidential candidate and running mate, respectively.

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He said that the duo had, within a shortwhile, become the candidates to beat in the 2023 election.

Bishop Okpebholo, who said he was not in active politics, expressed the hope that Mr Obi and his running mate, with the massive support they and their party, LP, were receiving from Nigerian voters, and their good pedigrees, were capable of lifting the people from the doldrums.

However, the 73-year-old clergy, businessman and philantropist declared that there were no strings attached to his donation and support for Barrister Abure, Obi and LP.

He said his interest was to see that majority of hapless Nigerians, particularly the youths, taken out of abject poverty and despairs.

Reacting to the donation and address, Barrister Abure, who hails from the town and a blood relation of the caregiving clergy, thanked him for the donations and for his philantropic acts and love for mankind.

Abure gave the pledges of Labour Party and that of the duo of Obi and Baba-Ahmed, to give their best in good governance to the Nigerian populace, should they be elected in the 2023 elections, alongside the other candidates of LP.

Nigeria, he also pledged, was bound to be lifted out of the woods, with the people-oriented national programmes of LP and Mr Obi, one of which he named as “from Consumption to Production”.

Also speaking, Comrade David Omodiale, chairman of LP chapter of Esan South East LGA of the Edo Central Senatorial District, while thanking Bishop Okpebholo for the great support for LP, praised Abure for his hard work and commitment, which he said had brought LP to proper reckoning.

Omodiale, who is said to be a symbolic LGA chairman in Edo State and in the country, for having withstood the storms the party had gone through, since its inception in the state in 2006, urged all LP supporters in the country to take after the good examples of Abure and others, so as to work assiduosly for the victory of Mr Obi and others.

Esan North East LGA, the homebase of Abure, the LP national chairman, is reputed to have produced political bigwigs like Chief Anthony Enahoro, the late politician and statesman who moved for Nigeria’s independence and the late Chief Anthony Anenih, a former national chairman of the defunct Social Democratic Party in the Third Republic and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).