Edo State PDP chapter accuses APC of threatening market women with stall seizure if they vote against them again

PEOPLES Democratic Party (PDP) officials in Edo State have accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of intimidating market women by threatening to confiscate their stalls if they do not vote for them in this week's state of assembly elections.

On Saturday, Nigerians go to the polls to elect 30 of the country's 36 governors and all of the members of the various state houses of assembly. In Edo State, Governor Godwin Obaseki is not up for re-election but he will be hoping that his party the APC sweeps the polls in the Edo State House of Assembly.

According to the PDP, Governor Obaseki is using strong arm tactics and blackmail to bully voters into supporting the APC, with market women in particular being singled out for harsh treatment. According to the PDP, the Obaseki administration is conniving with the APC leadership to coerce women traders in the state to support them or their market shops would either be taken from them or demolished.

Chris Nehikhare, the publicity secretary of the Edo State chapter of the PDP, said: "Their target this time are the hardworking traders in the markets especially New Benin, Oba Market, Etinosa Market and Ekiuwa market to mention a few in Benin metropolis. After financially inducing the APC Iye-Eki, market leaders, they deployed them to these markets to threaten, intimidate and harass.

"Market women are been forced and blackmailed to join an apology march to government house scheduled for Tuesday, March 5, 2019 to beg Adams Oshiomhole and Governor Obaseki for forgiveness. You will recall that all APC candidates especially President Buhari lost woefully on Saturday, February 23, 2019 in the presidential and national assembly polls, so they are to join the apology march and pledge their loyalty to APC or they lose their stalls and in some cases markets.

"Threatening a man’s means of financial survival for political compliance is reprehensible, irresponsible and condemnable. It exposes this government and its party, APC, as hollow, wicked and devilish, just like their counterparts in Lagos, they are tyrannical, despotic and anti-democratic."

However, Crusoe Osagie, Governor Obaseki's spokesman said: "It is a hallucination to imagine that the Governor Godwin Obaseki-led administration that has prioritised the wellbeing of our industrious market women and other business owners, through several reforms of trade practices in the state, would hurt their interest. It is still lost on the PDP that they lost the war in the presidential and national assembly elections held on Saturday February 23.

“They have depended on lies for decades as a strategy for accessing power and swindling people’s mandates but Edo people and Nigerians now know them for what they truly are, mandate swindlers, Just like the several lies and falsehoods which Chris Nehikhare is notorious for propagating, the allegation of threats to market women is completely false and the creation of Edo PDP."