Characteristically, an average liar also suffers a combination of two things- great deal of verbal hemorrhage and loss of memory. For the first lapse, he talks so much that he often colours his points so much that he is never comfortable until every word he utters is well embellished beyond what it ordinarily should be.

Secondly, he suffers so much mental failure that he never remembers what he said the last time even as he is repeating it for the umpteenth time. To cover his tracks, he becomes crudely creative as he attempts to artfully meander through the maze of his falsehood. For the Esan-speaking tribe of Edo State, there is an easy recipe for putting a liar in his or her place without any fuss-tell him to look up into the sky and tell everyone that the colour is white when it is obviously so.

Even when his audience is looking askance, he will have no reason to worry as he will only be guilty of stating the obvious. Between him and what he says all the time, no one is left in any doubt about who he is. And as a popular axiom puts it, nobody requires more than one encounter with a liar to know who his father is. At the moment, that seems to be the lot of some members of the opposition in the state.

In recent time, I have read a number of articles written by one Okharedia Ihimekpen. In all, he has never seen anything good about what Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole has done or is doing in the state. It does not matter that there are projects scattered across the state as evidence of his superlative performance within the three years of his stewardship.

Most scathingly, he still finds a morbid satisfaction in riling the man from Iyamho since he became governor of the state-moving from PDP’s Grace Group, through ANPP, Labour Party until he berthed at the ACN. In his conclusion, Oshiomhole was never good enough to aspire to becoming the governor of the state, hence the PDP henchmen never gave him the green light.

Suffice to say, Ihimekpen was an SA on Media during Igbinedion’s tenure. He was also a member of the Grace Group. During the period, he wrote with blood from his veins as ink, vilifying the same Anenih for being a clog in the wheel of progress against the group. Strangely, he now wants people to see those who came through that channel as relics of prehistoric relevance.

As if that is not enough, he also changed from merely castigating Oshiomhole into demanding that the man must run down Lucky Igbinedion, his predecessor, who still remains an eminent advertisement for PDP in the state if he (the governor) is to be taken seriously. Above all, he wants everyone in the state to accept his opinion that Chief Tony Anenih is the sage who saw the need to do away with Igbinedion for letting down the people of Edo State. All of these are against what the people of the state know so well.

As a person who has followed his treatise for some time, I have struggled to reconcile the situation on ground in the state with what appears to a belly-driven falsehood. In the main, it drives me to the conclusion that in the absence of any true reason for criticism, he should look straight at the sky above and tell the people what the colour is.

Otherwise, he runs the risk of repeating lies that will further lend credence to the fact that, like the party he represents, he loves celebrating lies. My opinion is based on the content of the article he authored as published in the Vanguard newspaper of Monday, September 5, 2011. It was titled, “Between Oshiomhole and Igbinedion’s legacies in Edo”.

Perhaps unaware that anyone could discover the nexus, he was also on the Daily Independent the next day with an advertorial titled “Edo @ 20: Is Oshiomhole Really in Action, Renewing the Dream?” Though the said advertorial was signed by Messrs Charles Osaro and Lawal Enakhimion, president and public relations officer of The Edo Collectives, sameness of the issues raised, language and pattern of thought gave him away as the author.

Rather typically, Ihimekpen tries to situate Oshiomhole and the profligate era which the PDP represented in the same context. By Jove, only the author can attempt to create the impression that there is such nexus. According to him, long before the race for the governorship election took place in 2003, the PDP, “under the guidance of the politically inimitable Chief Anthony Anenih” had concluded that Igbinedion would not return as governor of Edo State because the party adjudged him a non-performer in the first term.

Despite this avowed inimitability, he failed to stop Igbinedion from coming back for his second term in office. If the claim is indeed true, he should have known that Anenih is the last man to ditch his change of mind so quickly once it is made up. If then, Anenih’s mind was made up to remove the then governor, not even the pleading of the governor’s father would have changed his mind, especially as the so-called reason behind the appeal was as laughable as it was unreasonable.

If he agreed to return Igbinedion to power, it was only because the latter probably agreed to give him access to the state treasury and take the state through the same nightmare it went through during the first tenure. We are all witnesses to the fact that Edo State saw hell during the period in question. For Ihimekpen to now begin to canvass for a return to that era again is nothing but a disservice to the state and its people. We are wiser now and will never contemplate a return to Ihimekpen’s Golgotha.

Ihimekpen is in a hurry to wish away the odious reputation the PDP has in the state. That obviously is the reason he is trying, albeit futilely, to distance Igbinedion from the PDP and make him an island unto himself. In addition, he wants Oshiomhole to focus attention on criticising the errant former governor and leave the real culprit alone. But he is dead wrong because the Governor is smart enough to look beyond the façade and see who the real culprit is. As Professor Osaremehien Osunbor would say, it is inappropriate to chase a black goat in the night. It is only proper to light a candle instead of blaming the darkness. And like Oshiomhole, the people of the state know who their real enemy is. Without any doubt, Igbinedion is a lesser one.

If Ihimekpen is now in a hurry to paint Igbinedion in the colour we already know, he equally needs to explain to the people of the state why Anenih and the PDP did not expel him. I have tried to find answers from what I have read from his commentaries but found none. Worse still, I also could not find a nexus between the reality on ground in the state and what he is presenting through the pages of newspapers.

My conclusion is that with free monies from the inimitable one, his licence for the absurd is equally limitless.

Mr Ernest Omoarelojie is a media aide to the Edo State Governor.