By John Mayaki

As Edo State gubernatorial election draws nearer there is anxiety across all the Local Government Areas, LGAs.  The race is between the people and the ruling elite.

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Governor Godwin Obaseki came to power with prospects. With his apparent brilliance, he rode to authority, providing a detailed manifesto of what he intended to achieve.

But as time wound down, contrary to popular belief, what rather became the reality was a total abandonment of the pre-electoral and campaign promises. In instances where there was an attempt at work, it was at best half-hearted and executed with painful inferior quality.

Democracy leaves the privilege of assessment to the governed not the person(s) in power. Eventually, there was a collision of interests, ambitions, and dreams.

Pitching a tent with failure is clearly unwise and despite your love for the failing, you only can do that from a far distance. It was because of this that even Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the former governor of Edo State, who assisted Obaseki’s ascendancy to power, stayed away.

This reluctance to throw his weight behind him angered Obaseki, and instead of soul searching and changing his ways, he is on a different page with Oshiomhole.

The history of absurdities in Edo State is well detailed and by its shocking quality, is still fresh in memory. The most horrible of them all, perhaps, could be the Gestapo styled swearing-in of favoured members-elect of Edo House of Assembly.

At the moment, bulldozers and other heavy machines of grand destruction are at work in parts of Edo State, demolishing structures claimed to be on roadways and government properties. But in truth, the deconstruction is simply a wicked attempt to scapegoat political dissenters and opposition members.

On October 27, 2019, a group, Edo Peoples Movement, gathered to hold a meeting but ended up holding hospital bills and their own blood in their own hands.

A band of thugs disrupted the gathering.

This malady of violence in Edo has been sporadic but consistent nonetheless. And in the case of Honourable Yakson, the suspended Local Government Chairman of Etsako, we get a glimpse into the bottomless depth that characterizes the vengeful onslaught against dissent in Edo State.

But this concerted violent effort reached its crescendo a few weeks ago when another group of suspected thugs besieged the residence of Oshiomhole in Benin.

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Except for information, what would have happened would have been bloody. The state government denied that the incident happened.

But in the era of social media, the truth has become hard to suppress.

Dismissing the incident robbed the state of even the tiniest iota of trust. This informed Oshiomhole’s decision to seek justice at the federal level. Justice came, arresting the alleged suspects and masterminds of the unfortunate assault on the National Chairman’s life. But in the place of the joy that greets the arrival of justice, the reaction of officials of the state government was surprising.

It can be easy to dismiss points, painting the scenario as witch-hunt calls for pertinent questions. Since the state government’s official statement claimed no violent activity occurred, and the federal agency came to investigate, why are some people disturbed?

Desperate politicians seek to make of Edo State, a banana republic where lawlessness, chaos and disorder reign. They have made an appreciable level of success in their plans.

But the true question is: should they? We all need to wake up and stand up to this budding tyranny. It is not just because this matter involves the APC National Chairman, it is because when we allow tyranny to blossom, it grows very powerful and then comes for all of us.

 *Mayaki, a former Chief Press Secretary to Governor Godwin Obaseki, writes from the United Kingdom.

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