The Labour Party (LP) gubernatorial candidate in the upcoming September 21 election in Edo State, Olumide Akpata has rubbished claims that he is working for the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

He insisted that he is not a pawn in the political chess game in the state.

He explained that the photograph was taken when he was the President of the Nigerian Bar Association and Gbajabiamila was Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Akpata stated this while reacting to the claim that he was in the Edo governorship race to work for the victory of the APC.

He described the claim as “nothing more than a frantic attempt to muddy our political discourse, an unnecessary distraction borne out of the palpable fear of those who see their iron grip on our beloved state slipping away like sand through their fingers.

“Ordinarily, I would not dignify such obvious mudslinging with a response. However, the flood of calls and messages I have received from concerned citizens across Edo State and the country compels me to address this issue head-on and set the record straight.

“Let me be unequivocally clear: these allegations are entirely false; they are the fevered figments of imaginations belonging to persons who, in the face of their rapidly declining political fortunes, have become so desperate that they are now grasping at straws. The contradictions are so glaring and absurd that it would have been comical if the stakes for our State’s future were not so monumentally high.

“The APC has labelled me a mole who is being funded by Governor Godwin Obaseki of the Peoples Democratic Party. Now, in a rather bizarre display of political acrobatics, the PDP also claims that I am in cahoots with the APC to ‘divide votes’. One must wonder and indeed laugh at this unfolding spectacle. How can I possibly be ‘working’ for both sides simultaneously?

“The truth, my dear Edo people, is simple and straightforward, I am not one of them. I never have been, and I never will be. I am not a pawn in the political chess game of what we now refer to as PDAPC – two fingers of the same leprous hand that have mismanaged our great state for far too long, leaving our potential unfulfilled and our resources squandered. I stand alone, unbought, and unbowed, as the candidate of the people.”