Edo 2024: Retired Major General joins governorship race

A retired Major General, Charles Airhiavbere, has joined the race for the Edo State 2024 governorship election.

The retired Major General made his intention known at a stakeholders meeting in Benin, the state capital, on Monday.

Airhiavbere will be contesting on the platform of the All Progressives Congress.

Airhiavbere, also a former Executive Director, Finance and Administration of the Niger Delta Development Commission, said it was time for the APC to reclaim the state from the Peoples Democratic Party.

Hee said: “So, I have contested an election in Edo State to lead Edo people to a land of prosperity, a land of safety and a land of infrastructural development and that is why, five days after I retired in 2011, I joined the party at the federal level at that time.

“I could not have just been leaving the army and I come to Edo and face the opposition.

“I contested the party primaries seven months after I retired and won the PDP ticket because my programmes were laudable; they were clinically explained that these were the programmes I have for the Edo people.

“In 2016, I left the PDP and joined the APC because that was the government at the federal level.

“I have always insisted that Edo remains under the Federal Government because this is the heartbeat of the nation.

“How can the heartbeat be in another party and then you still say it is the heartbeat of the nation?

“It doesn’t work like that.

“That is why we discovered a few days ago, I was hearing that those who even came for the PDP programme spent over six hours coming from Akoko-Edo to Benin.

“We cannot continue like that.

“We must trust the government at the federal level and we must key in.

“That we return this state to the APC government is a task that must be done and that is why I decided to throw in my cap into the ring.

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“We must be prepared. 

“For a political party in opposition, I have experienced it. 

“I have been on both sides: Being in opposition, being in government and I know what it is.

“This is an opportunity for me to give you my scorecard of what we have done in NDDC. 

“When I got there, we didn’t have approved budgets from 2021, 2022 and 2023 and these are things we put in place in less than five months of my stay in NDDC.”