By Tony Erha
The much-touted party primaries of the Edo State wing of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), had ended, especially in the Edo South senatorial district comprising 7 local government areas (LGAs) and 77 wards. The Edo South senatorial seat had kept political pundits attentive, until its slipshod conduct, with two parallel exercises and two different results which had thrown APC into a crisis.
The ill conducts of the primaries leave a sour taste in the mouth and has become a bone fragment stuck to the throat of the National Working Committee – NWC of the party, where the case had been referred to its headquarters in Abuja, for further investigation and final decision. As if the battle in Edo was not enough, the battleground has been shifted to Abuja.
The said Edo South senatorial contest happens to be archetype with the last governorship primaries of the state’s electioneering, in which Senator Monday Okpebholo, “miraculously” emerged as APC’s flagbearer, in a stalemated 2024 exercise, that produced three different results and parallel party primaries.
An allusion to the Edo South primaries, which is similar to the one that threw up Okpebholo as governor, is now where Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu and Engr. Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama, had been declared winners from two different contests, in which an incumbent Edo South Senator, Neda Imasuen, was also featured as a contestant.
Whilst Ize-Iyamu was declared winner by APC Election Returning Officer, Mohammed Kabiru, with 33,39 votes, Ogbeide-Ihama scored 12,560, and Senator Imasuen 5,107 votes.
But, to many political observers, who have carefully monitored the build-ups and conduct of the Edo South senatorial contest, the 6,785 paltry votes, which the Chairman of the Electoral Committee Panel, Kabiru Ajana, attributed to Ize-Iyamu, a most dominant candidate amongst the three, who had long queues recorded during the exercises, across the 7 LGAs and 77 wards of Edo South, the 27,154 votes ascribed to Ogbeide-Ihama, and 13,580 scores of Senator Imasuen, known to be a mere spectator and an underdog of the contest, must have rendered the results which declared Ogbeide-Ihama first and a winner, with Ize-Iyamu coming third, as most questionable”
At the backdrop, Senator Imasuen wailed on a widespread Edo television interview that he and his supporters weren’t allowed to participate in his home-ward during the exercise by the state government-backed supporters of Ogbeide-Ihama.
“Intrigues as APC NWC May Override Govs, Party Leaders in Senatorial Primaries Outcomes”, is a featured report published on May 20, 2026, by the BIGPEN News. Herein, Fred Itua commented on the party primaries held across the country by APC. But he commented on the Edo South exercise as thus;
“In Edo State, it was learnt that the wife of President Bola Tinubu, Mrs. Remi Tinubu, threw her weight behind Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu for a senatorial ticket, yet parallel and conflicting declarations from the exercise suggested that the governor’s preferred structure prevailed on the ground”
An introduction to the report, stated that full-blown internal crisis had erupted within the ruling APC in several states, following the conduct of the senatorial primaries, as the Presidential Villa and the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party find themselves on a collision course with state governors who defied carefully signaled preferences from the presidency”.
Before, during and after the parallel exercises of Edo South, the state had been besieged by the tormenting rumours that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory had given stern warnings to Senator Monday Okpebholo, to deliver Ogbeide-Ihama at all cost.
The rumoured imposition of Ogbeide-Ihama by Minister Wike, was alleged to have been supported by Senator Adams Oshiomhole, representative of Edo North senatorial district in the Red Chamber. The choice of Ogbeide-Ihama, was alleged to be connected to a former agreement entered into by Governor Okpebholo, Wike and Ogbeide Ihama.
Also, the rumour mill in Edo is rife that Wike, Chief Lucky Igbinedion and his father, Chief Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion, the Esama of Benin, are desperately fighting ahead to return Edo South senatorial zone to the firm grip of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), where its factional Legacy Group is poised to give Wike and his PDP faction, a soft landing with Ogbeide-Ihama, Omosede Igbinedion, the daughter of Esama, and Paddy Iyamu.
In my first article published in the Conclave News in May, 2024, my thoughts and key forecast was that the emergence of Senator Okpebholo as an APC governor was bound to provoke the hawks of the PDP into re-engineering the swift comeback of PDP, to try to dominate the politics of the state, after the defeat of Asue Ighodalo, who was actually defeated by Okpebholo.
In “APC Edo South Primaries And The Crisis Of Internal Democracy”, a prolific essayist and veteran journalist, Osazua Ivbaze, had pronounced;
“The echoes from yesterday’s APC Edo South Senatorial primaries, once again exposed one of the deepest contradictions in Nigerian politics – the frequent collision between democratic ideals and political power arrangements. What should ordinarily have been a straightforward exercise to allow party members freely choose their candidate ended in confusion, controversy and competing claims of victory”.
Still on the stalemated Edo South senatorial primary, Dr. Patrick Ebojele, “a brother” and Chief Press Secretary to Governor Okpebholo, had declared in a stern statement in the Grooves Watch News and other media of May 23, 2026 that; “Ize-Iyamu Must Respect Governor (Okpebholo) while APC must resist gambling with Edo South”.
Further, the statement by the governor preempted the ongoing investigation of the primaries and authentic announcement of its winner by APC NWC, a thing which Fred Itua earlier reported as having brought some governors at loggerhead with the NWC and the Presidency.
The Governor referred the burgled primaries as; “The just-concluded APC Edo South Senatorial District primary election, in which Rt. Hon. Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama secured the highest number of votes ahead of Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu and Senator Neda Imasuen”.
However, it is doubtful if Pastor Ize-Iyamu would egg on his supporters to abuse Senator Okpebholo, the number-one citizen of the state, upon whom he draws a lot of strength, just as the Governor wouldn’t order his aides and supporters, like Egogo and others, who openly abused Ize-Iyamu, a top stalwart of the party, who was twice a governorship flagbearer of the party before the coming of Governor Okpebholo. Again I am not sure if Okpebholo, on his own volition, would spite Ize-Iyamu, a man who assisted him with the ladder to become a governor.
The alleged abuses on the governor and Ize-Iyamu only speak volumes about over-indulgence of party supporters and aides, who can’t be called to order when they widen the animosity between political opponents who ordinarily meet and hobnob.
Still, political supporters are not to blame entirely over confrontational attitudes, whereas their principals often openly engage in political misnomers, like imposition of unpopular candidates in primaries.
One actually finds it disturbing, like I stated in a previous article, when Emperor Jarret Tenebe, the state chairman of the APC party, who should have known better about the ideals of direct primaries, where consensus failed, being the same that supervised the failed primaries, as was recommended by the APC NWC and the Presidency. But indication are that Tenebe, like Governor Okpebholo, was said to have acted on instructions.
With all said and done, the bucks fall on Governor Okpebholo’s table, where he remains between political landmines by the almighty Minister Wike, the man from Rivers State, who once openly stopped a willing Okpebholo, not to probe ex-Governor Godwin Obaseki, over many fraud cases piled up on him.
On the other flank, it is imperative that the Edo South of about 60% voting force in the state, could queue behind Ize-Iyamu, to win and deliver a part of the 2.5 million bulk votes that was projected for Tinubu’s election by Governor Okpebholo, should he be given the senatorial ticket, that was clearly won by him.
A conciliation by Ize-Iyamu to jettison the senate ticket, is likely to precipitate a groundswells of voter’s rebellion against APC and President Tinubu, and on the long run, the governor.
Quite frankly, Governor Okpebholo is a good man, who means well for the Edo people. But, he is hardly in charge of his government affairs, due to external control and some selfish persons in his cabinet.
That is why I disagree with Dr. Ebojele’s submission that the governor knows little or nothing about the political predicament of Pastor Ize-Iyamu, over which he is accused across various social media platforms.