Leave Agba alone and stop divisive activities, Benin group cautions Ugbo, Benin Solidarity Movement

Edo Mahia Khin, a public-oriented body, consisting of institutions and individuals of the Benin ethnic group of Edo State, has counseled the Benin Solidarity Movement (BSM) and its president, Curtis Eghosa Ugbo, to avoid carrying out smear campaigns against tje immediate past minister of state for budget and national planning, Prince Clem Agba

It warned that the divisive activities were capable of creating the bad blood amid the sub-ethnic groups and people of Edo State, who were homogenous.

This and other positions of the group were contained in a press statement signed by Osadolor Imadiyi and Peter Edigin, president and secretary, respectively.

Stating that Edo Mahia Khin “will not fold its hand to allow trouble makers to sever the umbilical cord that binds all Edo people”, the socio-cultural group scolded Curtis Ugbo and Ms. Esohe Adun, the Acting Secretary General of BSM, for signing the press statement entitled, “Clem Agba using Phillip Ugbodaga (Edo North) to fight the Benins (Edo South),” adding that it was a fabricated barefaced lie intended “to attract undue public attention to themselves, and for pecuniary gains.”

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“Ugbo and Adun, through the statement that was used in some media, chided Prince Clem Agba, the immediate past Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, as having displaced a Benin person for Dr. Phillip Ugbodaga, (Agba’s own PA and boy), who they said was least qualified as a Chief Medical Director, than the said Benin person, for the National Orthopedic Hospital, located in Edo State”, Edo Mahia Khin maintained.

The group also regretted that Ugbo and Ms. Adun tried very hard, but unsucessfully to drag the good name of the revered Edo monarch, Omo N’ Oba N’ Edo, Ewuare II, the Oba of Benin, into their selfish gambit, intended to hate Prince Agba, a great son of the Oba Palace and of the Edo people.

While the statement appealed to the Oba not to mind divisive calls by trouble makers like Curtis Ugbo, it reiterated that the Oba was a father to all sons and daughters of the state, thus saying that Ugbo and Ms. Adun could not be more Benin and Edo than Prince Agba and their teeming members.

“We are very happy with Prince Agba, for the meaningful and concrete developments he had brought to the three senatorial districts of Edo State, as well as other parts of Nigeria, within the three years and a half he stayed as a junior minister. We cannot wish him bad, but pray for him for doing Edo and Nigeria proud,” the group claimed.

It could be recalled that the BSM, which the Edo Mahia Khin cited as having been causing troubles and lying to the Nigerian public, had lambasted Prince Agba, as having lobbied for undue influencing Dr. Ugbodaga, an indigene of Edo north senatorial district of the state, for the position, even though he was less qualified than the other one from Edo south district.

But Edo Mahia Khin had dismissed this, stating that; “Even though Curtis Ugbo and Ms. Adun are not medical doctors and top civil servants, they claimed to know more than the Federal Government of President Bola Tinubu, who in its wisdom and procedure, recently confirmed Dr. Ugbodaga for the position, after reviewing the same appointment earlier made by President Buhari.”