The Labour Party governorship candidate in Edo State, Olumide Akpata, has accused supporters of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of destroying his campaign billboards. Briefing journalists in Benin on Friday, Akpata said the action was a desperate attempt to silence his party’s message of hope and positive change for the state.
He alleged that the party has experienced different attempts at undermining its campaigns by saboteurs. “Over the past few days, we have witnessed a coordinated, premeditated, and insidious assault on our constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech, political expression, and the fundamental tenets of democracy itself,” Akpata said. He cited cases of threats, actual pulling down of the party’s billboards and listed the affected local government areas to include Ovia North east, Egor, Oredo and Ikpoba Okha, adding that the party has received threats that the days of its billboard at the Ramat Park are numbered.
“Billboards that I, as a law-abiding citizen and a gubernatorial candidate, legally paid for and erected across the length and breadth of Benin City have come under attack from the local government areas, who are agents of the incumbent governor, Godwin Obaseki. “In Oredo Local Government Area, two of my billboards were viciously vandalised, defaced, and ultimately torn down, with explicit threats of more removals to come.
“The situation is equally dire and unacceptable in Ovia North East, where two more billboards bearing my visage and campaign messages were mindlessly destroyed by these merchants of antidemocratic forces,” he said.
