By Osagie Imasogie
Even days after Dr Asue Ighodalo, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, candidate ended his Europe tour where he met with Edo State citizens in Diaspora, the reverberations and echoes of the engagements can still be heard in the chambers of the people’s collective consciousness.
Through the social media and person one-one-one interviews, people have been expressing their opinions about Ighodalo in respect to the engagements. The collective review I have been able to put together is that Ighodalo came ready for the job and he is fit for purpose.
Ighodalo was in Europe last week to meet with Edo Citizens in Italy, the UK and Germany where he engaged people in five different cities with all the venues filled to capacity to hear his vision and mission for Edo State.
Mr Saiki, a stakeholder from Akoko-Edo, who monitored the events keenly from Igarra said he was not surprised at all how successful the tour went. “I was not expecting anything less than success of the tour. Listen to Asue speak, pay attention to his countenance, you will see a mix of dedication driven by vision”.
As a matter of fact, I deliberately interviewed non-party members so I can have a balanced opinion so I stopped at Auchi to interview a former lecturer from Auchi Polytechnic, Malam Yusuf Idris, who claimed to be apolitical. “I am not really interested in politics but recently, I had the opportunity to watch in my phone engagements of the PDP candidate in one meeting held in Benson Idahosa University, I was impressed. I have since been followed his political developments and engagements. I must confess I felt like joining PDP when I watched all the clips from the Europe tour. And essentially, he manifesto seems to be like a working document that can see Edo State move ahead of other states when judiciously implemented. I am impressed, honestly. He is the real deal”.
The tales in Edo Central and Benin were not different from the expected acknowledgement of Ighodo’s vision, industry, preparedness and plan for Edo State as elicited in his Europe tour.
Recall the tour took the team first to Reggio Emilia in Italy, from there, Manchester and London where subsequently visited, and lastly, it was concluded in Hamburg and Nuremberg in Germany.
The tour gave Ighodalo the opportunity to engage diasporan stakeholders from Edo State on the much talked about manifesto titled “The Pathways to Prosperity for All”. From feedbacks, those who attended these meetings came away fulfiled. Even a week after the engagements, the fallouts still dominate the social media as users are still discussing parts of the meetings that they approved of.
