Kennedy Odion, Chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in Edo State, has lambasted the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for resorting to panic measures to curtail the rising profile of the opposition party.
Reacting to the recent attack carried out on its office complex in Benin City, Odion reflected: “We don’t really know what is going on other than politics of bitterness that we have seen that the APC has engaged themselves in in recent times. It has been their nature to resort to violence forgetting the rule of the game.”
He recalled, “it was around 8pm on Wednesday night when I got the distress call that our Secretariat is on fire. Actually they came to raze the house down. But as God will have it, with the help of passersby and the residents of the area they were resisted and they fled.
“Eyewitnesses said that they were masked and they removed the CCTV camera that’s supposed to have captured them so that we don’t have access to their footage. We have spread the report around and the security agencies are aware of it.
“Our concern is that in recent times the APC State Chairman, Jarret Tenebe, have boasted that there’s no opposition in Edo State. That those calling themselves ADC that the state is not safe for them. That anybody that wants to be ADC should leave the state. I believe he is working in confirmation of that statement to see that there’s no opposition in Edo State.
“But that’s not the will of the people and that’s not in the Constitution of Nigeria. People have the right to associate themselves with whichever platform they feel best represents their ideology. For us at ADC we believe in engaging the people and that’s what we have been doing.”
