It is unfortunate that in this current campaign season in Edo State, the All Progressive Congress(APC) has descended into the abyss of bedlam, hate speeches, outright lies, alternative truth, indecent languages against the person of Dr Asue Ighodalo, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) standard bearer, in the upcoming Edo State gubernatorial election. This is so because the APC is running away from issue-based campaigns as the concept is alien to the party and its candidate. APC and its members are still stuck in old, parochial and mundane ways of politics.
The APC has not taken any specific steps in hiding its disdain for politics that is ideologies-based where the electorate want to listen to profound manifestoes, project policies and potential Action Plans. The party does not want any avenue, provided or created, to discuss its plans for the state and its citizens. Its running from pillar to post to avoid issues-based campaigns. The candidate of the party, Senator Monday Okpebholo, a political child of political circumstance, is not capable of holding any arable discussio. Therefore, he and his party easily drift to rhetoric of personal abuse, slander and disdainful verbal contestation that cannot add to the political radiation the electorate are expecting.
On his part, Asue has always said he would not, for any reason, leave the path of integrity to pursue the kind of horrible politics and langauge lacking in oxygen that APC has now been known for. He has severally told his teeming followers and effective campaign team that they should eschew such languages that are capable of heating up the polity, which can also boomerang to endanger the political stability of the state.
Every right thinking politician ought to know what the priorities are in Nigeria today that should ordinarily occupy the front burner in our political engagements. And this is why issues-based campaigns are imperative.
APC must invent another political strategy to fit into our 21st century politics – we are not in the era of savages and barbarians. The party and its candidate must avoid acrimony, personal abuse and transfer of aggression. Distorting the truth about Asue has been counterproductive. The citizens of Edo State look at him through a wider lense of competence and preparedness, as he obviously seem to be the hardest working and most intelligent of the 3 major candidates.
● Shaibu Yusuf, an independent political commentator, sent in this opinion from Auchi.
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