Edo state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday denied the allegation made against the party by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole that it masterminded the Friday’s killing of his principal private secretary, Olaitan Oyerinde, and the previous weekend’s accident involving his convoy in which three journalists died, saying that? the? statement was reckless, wicked and criminal.
This was coming shortly after Oshiomhole and large crowd of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) supporters’ flag off campaign ahead of the July 14 governorship election in the state. The governor promised to consolidate on the achievements recorded in the state in less than three years.
Orbih at the news briefing said the allegation by Oshiomhole,? the state ruling party Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and his surrogates was a dubious attempt to incite the people against the PDP, and cause unwarranted attacks on the party and its leaders because the governor was aware of the defeat that awaited him at the polls.
He said a great number of the PDP leaders did not know the governor’s private secretary, saying that it was only at his death that they got to know from information already in the public domain that Olaitan was not from Edo state, might not have been a politician or a political analyst, and so might not have, and could not have remembered having any dealings with him.
The Edo state PDP chairman called on the police to investigate the information that the driver and owner of the truck involved in the accident with the governor’s convoy were card-carrying members of the ACN, and that the lorry even had Oshiomhole and ACN sticker on it.
Orbih said a responsible government would call for detailed investigation and wait for the outcome but that this was not the issue in the present cases. He accused Governor Oshiomhole of influencing police investigation by accusing Chief Tony Anenih and leadership of the PDP in the state.
He recalled that when a former chairman of the PDP in the state, Chief Samson Ekhabafe, his son, driver and police orderly died in an auto crash, the party did not accuse anybody, but it took it purely as an accident.