The All Progressives Congress (APC), women leaders in Edo, have said that Mrs Betsy Obaseki, the wife of the party’s Governorship candidate, holds Edo women in high esteem.
At a news conference in Benin on Saturday, the women leaders described as sad, the falsehood being peddled by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), that Mrs Obaseki described Edo women as “prostitutes’’.
The APC women leaders said that the wife of the gubernatorial aspirant would never used derogatory words for Edo women.
They urged Edo women to discountenance the campaign of calumny mounted against the wife of the APC governorship candidate.
A former Executive Director, Edo State Poverty Alleviation, Mrs Evelyn Igbafe, who recently decamped to the PDP, had alleged that Mrs Obaseki described Edo women as prostitutes.
The remark pitched Mrs Obaseki against PDP women in the state.
Mrs Obaseki was alleged to have recently said that PDP’s 12 years of bad leadership forced Edo women into prostitution abroad.
In view of the alleged statement, Igbafe had at a news conference in Benin, on Wednesday, asked Mrs Obaseki to tender an unreserved apology within four days or face mass protest from Edo women.
The Edo APC Women Leader, Mrs Aisosa Amadasun, said it was quite disheartening that Igbafe who had penchant for “criss-crossing’’, parties decided to misinterpret the content of Mrs Obaseki’s remarks.
“What Mrs Obaseki said, which we all agreed with, was that the previous government of PDP, because of the way they destroyed the very fabric of our society, forced a lot of young women to travel abroad for greener pastures.
“If Evelyn Igbafe did not understand the write up, she should be blamed for that or she should have asked somebody to read it and explain to her.
“I personally wondered why she brought in the issue of prostitution.
“In 2007 she was in PDP, as soon as the Oshiomhole got his mandate in 2008; in 2009, Igbafe decamped to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN),” Amadasun said.
According to her, after that, in 2011, when we were preparing for re-election of Oshiomhole in 2012, again, she decamped to PDP.
“We won the election; Oshiomhole got 18 over 18 in all the local governments. As soon as we won that election, Igbafe again decamped back to APC.
“Now we are preparing for another crucial election, again she decamped to PDP. Edo women are very happy that she has gone back to PDP.
“If you look at her antecedents, there is no party she belongs to that wins elections and we want to warn her that APC will not take her back because we are going to win this election.
“Anybody she supports never wins election and I feel sorry for the PDP.
“Please remember she is going to try and come to APC again; we will never accept her in APC.
“On Sept. 28, we are going to give PDP the final burial, ’’ the women leader said.