ONE is constrained to comment on the weighty admission by the Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole that the late President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, supported his aspiration financially and otherwise pre and post – April 14, 2007.

This was at the public presentation of the book, Power, Politics and Death by Mr Segun Adeniyi, ex-Special Adviser (Media) to the late president, in Abuja.

These are two issues that come to the fore and will engage the attention of any discerning watcher of Edo Politics:

a)The proxy war and high-wire manipulations and posturing that rocked and scuttled Professor Oserheimen Osunbor’s governorship.

b)Comrade Oshiomhole’s semantic somersault and diabolic sophism in his definition of GODFATHERISM, being  in this extant case, a prime beneficiary thereof.

Governor Oshiomhole’s admission of financial and moral (read: judicial and otherwise) support from the late President before, during and after the Saturday, April 14, 2007, falls in line with conventional political wisdom within Edo State and beyond that certain elements within the PDP took their ego war too far by transferring their aggression to a hapless Professor Osunbor in their bid to score cheap political and pecuniary points. The myth that Osunbor encountered a galaxy of challenges has come to the fore.

It is glaring that the course of true justice was not served in part due to the admitted executive meddlesomeness and in the other through contrived internal road-blocks and extra-judicial manipulations that attended proceedings and events of that period (as alleged by the recipient).

It is also trite knowledge, too, that when the presidential funding for the Oshiomole Project in the run-up to and during the April 14, 2007 governorship election did not yield the desired capital, a tactical recourse was taken to explore and exploit extra- judicial loopholes, all in a bid to stop Professor Oserheimen Osunbor at all costs

A dispassionate analyses of events, proceedings, pronouncements and judgments of both the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal and the Court of Appeal, reveal a deliberate, hidden and diabolical script programmed to short-change, short-circuit and scuttle the election of Professor Osunbor, when all the efforts (including the presidential funding) failed to click.

A fair corollary from the foregoing shows that this internal connivance that resulted in a sitting PDP President sponsoring an Action Congress governorship candidate in a PDP-controlled state bespeaks the coven-like nature of the politics of that period, that of transferring aggression directed at a foe that cannot be confronted frontally, to an innocent Osunbor who, in all sincerity, thought the struggle for primacy was between him and Comrade Oshiomhole.

It shows, succinctly, that this Edo stanza of the proxy war was a part of a larger set-up to erect a Favourable national political matrix for the late President and Osunbor was made to be the fall-guy in the glaringly anti-party schemings that may have even been the lot of Ondo, Ekiti and Osun State.

Discerning political watchers will not be surprised by the Comrade Governor’s public confession of presidential godfatherism as it conforms with and graphically confirms their knowledge that Prof.Osunbor was, inadvertently, sacrificed on the altar of selfish political considerations and expediency designed to burnish some presidential ego and build “convenient structures” in the process.

What may stun some people is the apparent cross-party connivance and the relevance of the forum chosen for the release of such a confidential information of the magnitude of the one released, albeit surreptiously, by the beneficiary.

It is apparent that, ab initio, Prof. Oserheimen Osunbor struggled against Presidential men, materials and financial resources arrayed in strong and frightening phalanxes behind Comrade Oshiomhole between Saturday, April 14, 2007 and Tuesday November 11, 2008.

It straightens out that the presidential support for the then Comrade Aspirant was borne out of survivalist considerations as a hedge and antidote against fears of labour unrest in the life of the Yar’Adua regime.

If Prof. Osunbor survived as the Governor of Edo State for a cumulative period of 17 months and 11 days, then his staying power against covert forces should be applauded and rekindled for the overall benefit of all Edolites in the nearest future.

One very relevant question Edo people, nay Nigerians should find an answer to is: If the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (May God Bless His Good Soul) ably and duly deployed presidential support for  Oshiomhole before, during and after the April 14, 2007 governorship election in Edo State, against Prof. Osunbor, then what is the real meaning of Godfatherism vis-à-vis the Comrade Governor’s time-worn definition? Questions, Questions and Questions.

*Dr.  Okhakumhe Ijebor, a political analyst, wrote from Abuja.