Ahead of the Edo State 2024 governorship election, the Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, has made a formal announcement, expressing his desire to compete for the Peoples Democratic Party ticket in the upcoming party primaries.
Shaibu made his declaration known in a televised announcement on Monday morning.
MetronewsNG reports that the Deputy Governor, an alumnus of University of Jos, first ventured into politics in 2003 when he contested elections into the Edo State House of Assembly under the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) but lost.
Shaibu once again in 2007 contested and won the election to represent the good people of Etsako West Constituency under the platform of the Action Congress (AC) at the Edo State House of Assembly. While he was at Edo State House of Assembly, he was elected as the majority leader on 24 February 2010 after Rt. Hon. Zakawanu Garuba was impeached as the Speaker of the Edo state House of Assembly.
In 2015, after spending eight years at the Edo state House of Assembly, he contested and won the Etsako Federal constituency House of Representatives seat to beat his closest rival with a poll of 42,079 votes against Abbas Braimah of the Peoples Democratic party who polled 29,941 votes to clinch the representative seat.
He was unanimously announced as the running mate to governor Godwin Obaseki[15] at the last 2016 Edo State gubernatorial election and the duo eventually won the election and was sworn in on 12 November 2016.
On 16 June 2020, Shaibu resigned his membership from the All Progressives Congress, APC.
