Edo State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) today offered the Benin-based widow taunted by Governor Adams Oshiomhole to “go and die” a N250,000 lifeline.
The party chairman, Chief Dan Orbih made the announcement in a press statement.
He said PDP was appalled and viewed with consternation Oshiomhole’s “brutal, inhuman and merciless treatment of a widow street-trader whose wares he ordered seized.”
Governor Oshiomhole was recently caught on tape advising a old woman who pleaded with the governor to consider her widowhood, to “go and die.”
Said Orbih, ” Edo State PDP will not let any Edo person ‘to go and die’ if it can help it, especially not hard working people like that widow who are engaged in lawful enterprises that are, in themselves, not easy to carry on.
“To this end, our party has instituted an endowment fund for all widows and oppressed people in the state and by this release, we invite the widow captured in the video of the encounter with Governor Oshiomhole to come to the PDP Secretariat on No. 70, Sapele Road, at 11am on Tuesday December 3, 2013 to receive a first-installment sum of N250,000.00 to cushion the pain, trauma and loss occasioned by her mistreatment and the seizure of the items she sells.”
The party described the governor’s action as “appalling, insensate, disgraceful, indecent, cruel and below board.”
PDP held that Oshiomhole’s have exposed himself as uncaring, stressing, “our hearts go to that hapless widow in this her time of travails and through her, to other widows who have been oppressed by the unfriendly policies of the administration in Edo State.”
Reasoned the party, “governance is about the people and as a responsible national institution, Edo PDP cannot be unconcerned about the wrong treatment of indigenes of the state to whom the present administration promised heaven just to win their votes.
“We will continue to stand in the gap to ensure that Edo people are deservedly fairly treatment
“If Governor Oshiomhole believes that Edo People sinned by voting him into office, let him remember that he will account for his actions, if not to the people because he apparently does not think much of them, but to God Almighty in the short or long run.”
PDP thanked “all those who have been humanely concerned about the plight of the widow and have stood out vehemently against the crying shame that was the insensitive action of a governor who seems bent on repaying electoral favor with ingratitude”.