BY EFOSA OBASOGIE

Having emerged as Governor in what was ultimately a popular manner, indeed in all its most consequential ramifications, legendary unionist and impactful man of the people, former Edo State Governor and current Chairman of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, had nevertheless somehow managed to deteriorate into the utterly deplorable ethos whose antithesis his emergence had hitherto so succinctly represented.

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Indeed, in Oshiomole’s bewildering descent into the odious politics he had once rescued the people from, he had allowed himself to sink even into the brazenness of imposing an exceptionally colourless individual of a complete nonstarter of a politician with absolutely no leadership credentials as successor and Governor over those who had once deified him.

Humans can always be relied upon to forget that nothing is as transient as power and that at the end of the day, it is always the Man Upstairs who calls the shots. Quite painfully, especially to a great many of us his fans, but rightly so in tandem with the unfailing justice of God, Oshiomole’s chosen son turned out to be an absolutist of an Absalom with an unwavering commitment to the total disgrace and demystification of his mentor and benefactor. Indeed, as if to guarantee his humiliation up to the status of a blank cheque even the most uncompromising banker would find himself all too eager to honour, Obaseki’s chief instigator, confidant, cheerleader, and henchman in his rebellion turned out to be his deputy and Oshiomole’s very close blood relation!

In no state in Nigeria today, is the intra-party opposition more heinously emasculated, traumatised and terrorised than Edo of all places! What Obaseki is being allowed to get away with in Edo, no President of Nigeria, not even Olusegun Obasanjo, ever attempted. What Obaseki is machinating in Edo today, President Buhari would never imagine, attempt, allow or condone at federal level. Perhaps, when Obaseki is through crushing his own supposed fellow party men, he will set his sights on the main opposition People’s Democratic Party, PDP. Right now, he appears ready to bolt to the PDP at any moment yet insists on maintaining a stranglehold over the APC he clearly no longer has any faith in.

Edo is now a state in which politics has so completely failed as to be veritably marooned in the circumstances of an entity liable to be placed under political receivership vide a declaration of a state of emergency. In fact, if my history serves me right, never before has such a dark cloud of all that is most shamefully politically untoward hung over Edo state, since the heydays of Godwin Obaseki’s grandfather and British-imposed Iyase of Benin, whose taste in politics and preparedness to undermine his Oba and overlord, ushered in one of the most traumatic periods ever witnessed in what would become the now defunct Midwest Region.

Let those hobnobbing with Obaseki in the euphoria of the moment wait for another tenure if Edo is, in fact, unlucky enough to have such a man so pitiably lacking in democratic credentials as Governor for a second term, and see if they do not all end up in the belly of the tiger starting with Philip Shaibu, their ringleader.

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Yet who might we forensically blame for the scarification of Edo into this all too obvious gaping wound of a pathetic excuse for a functioning state? Certainly, Godwin Obaseki, of course, who, as Governor, sits behind the table at which the buck stops. Yet, if we are to be fair to all concerned, and especially, to ourselves, how are we to ignore the Oshiomole factor in the entire saga, when he is chiefly responsible for foisting this taciturn potentate upon our state?

Remarkably, before the morally reprehensible scuttling of the decamping of Osagie Ize-Iyamu back into the APC, the only impactful outing Edo APC had been able to accomplish in a long while, had held in the private residence of General Charles Airhiavbere, his premises proving to be the only place safe enough for the APC, the ruling party at the center, to hold a meeting in the whole of Edo State! What’s more, the exiled legislators, members of the first arm of government, who were chased out of their mandates to our collective shame as a supposedly democratic nation, are being accommodated by the same Airhiavbere in Abuja, as I have gathered. This is the same Airhiavbere, who, as far as I know, had hitherto proved to be Oshiomole’s one and only true threat in his entire public career, be it as unionist or state Governor!

As a person of faith and student of history, if I have not learned anything else, at least I have seen how God ever often reveals a man’s worst enemies from the ranks of those of his own household and the friends and familiars he is most at home with, only to raise brothers-from-another-mother for him from those he lacks blood ties with and had once considered his bitterest adversaries.

Why are Nigerian politicians so miserably desperate to determine their successors? Funny enough, and as it has more often than not turned out, the chief executives who managed to impose their successors on the people have woefully fared far worse than those who had the good sense to keep an open mind and allow the process of succession to fairly play itself out. As a matter of fact, the recurring decimal of anointed political sons turning rabidly and ravenously on their benefactors is probably the most interesting inflection of Nigerian politics, and if anyone thinks this is a phenomenon historically restricted to the present Republic, he clearly knows nothing about pre-Independence politics or the politics of the First and Second Republics.

Comrade Governor, maybe you are desperately looking for yet another person you consider to be pliable, docile, compliant and conformist to impose on the people of Edo State. In that case, you would only be repeating a very big mistake all over again. There was a time at which you led the people in the paths of righteousness before you decided to start playing the sort of politics you had once so celebratedly opposed. In the final analysis, all politics is local and even if certain others are now inclined to discount you as completely irrelevant in the politics of Edo State, I refuse to be moved and will remain confident in my assessment of you as the preeminent political leader in Edo as a whole.

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This moment in history beckons you to sober reflection for the purpose of leading the people aright once more. Indeed, this time around, all temptation to self-aggrandisement or enticement into placing reliance on human understanding, you would do well to resist as you endeavour to lead the people as you once did in spirit and in truth, even as the child of God you are and should be careful never to unbecome. Needless to say, between repeating your mistakes or correcting them, the choice is squarely yours.

Mr. Obasogie, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Benin City.

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