National leadership compromised for unpatriotic reasons

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Loss expensive, self inflicting 

By Ozioruva Aliu

BENIN CITY – COMRADE Godwin Erahon is a former State Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress and former State Chairman of the defunct CPC and Nigeria Union of Journalists. He x-rayed the circumstances leading to and the outcome of last Saturday’s governorship election.

 Election day loss despite claims of Edo being an APC state

First I wasn’t surprised in the end because two weeks to the election, I made my observation to the governorship candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu and then Mr Lucky Imasuen who was the head of the campaign team in the state that we were losing ground and that there was need for the campaign council to meet but Lucky Imasuen said he will get back to me, up till now he has not get back to me. Even though at that time, it was even too late to intervene on the matter because I saw certain things. 

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As a journalist and somebody who has been on ground for years, I will be stupid to say that I cannot read the mood of the people. The first was that there was a basic issue in the election. 

Majority of the people both electorate and those who are not even registered voters just believed that it is too much of Oshiomhole and so whether Obaseki was right or wrong, whether he was wicked or kind didn’t matter to them; let us humiliate and demystify Oshiomhole, that was the popular will of majority of our people sincerely speaking. 

Comrade Oshiomhole did not help issues; such a brilliant person who is so endowed naturally, his biggest problem is ego and inferiority complex, he wants to be seen as the one who did it alone, he wants to claim all the credit. If you see the campaign structure that was set up, they were predominantly his boys and his ladies, whether or not they were on ground in their communities, whether they were liked by the people doesn’t matter what’s important was they were among those who will have unfettered access to Oshiomhole and they go there go and gossip and go and lie and because of his own nature, he doesn’t want to hear the other side, all they wanted was Comrade has said it and that was it but from my background, the only person I will not be able to talk to, is a dead body. 

Even President Buhari when we were in CPC, when we held meetings, I used to tell him my mind and he  used to like it even though now he is to us unreachable, incommunicado.

  Osagie Ize-Iyamu was probably handicapped because he wouldn’t want to be seen confronting Comrade Oshiomhole. For example, what was the wisdom behind picking a running mate from Etsako West, the same local government where you have Comrade himself and then a local government that is fathered by the Otaru of Auchi who is the closest person to President Buhari in this state. 

I cannot see any value added to the election or the campaign by the running mate. I believe if he had picked a popular candidate from Edo Central, I can assure you that we would have got more than 60 per cent of the votes from Ishan. That sense of belonging that the rumour being spread that APC doesn’t want Ishan to rule by 2024 would have been erased. There would have been some level of balancing.

   At a stage, even the leaders of the Campaign Council became unreachable; you cannot see them to rub minds with.   

   In Edo south, Oshiomhole coming to dictate knowing that the Benins have resolved that they would not allow the Comrade to dominate them politically any longer, the more those they know as their boys, the more angry they became, that is the truth about it but that doesn’t mean Oshiomhole does not have his credit, there are several areas where he is very, very useful but it is not in all cases that a General should be at the forefront.

   On the side of Pastor, his wife was going to be a major asset to the campaign because the values she added to the campaign was quite unique and that alone would have been a very wonderful sentiment, I a not sure that in previous election attempted by Osagie Ize-Iyamu, she came out the way she did in this one. The woman attracted a lot of support but even at that I can assure you that the result of the election was not reflection of the popularity or otherwise of PDP or Governor Obaseki.

National Level of the APC

I believe that at our national level there were very funny power play so I believe that at that level there were real sabotage because on the field, you found that the INEC and security agencies were more against APC agents and APC leaders, they were ready tools in the hands of the PDP and that is ironic to have a ruling party working against itself, it is unheard of and that is funny so all those things militate against the APC because the APC truly trusted that there was going to be balance of power, it is just like you send a battalion to the warfront and then on the eve of election you withdraw their arms and ammunition meanwhile they are already at the battlefield so whatever happens to them, you are the cause. You didn’t wish them to return. 

But we thank God that we returned most of us unhurt and so we look at the way things would be for APC.

   Another issue is the unnecessary and uncalled for broadcast by Asiwaju Tinubu, that also infuriated a lot of people; what is his business why should he be the one to tell us that Obaseki is not a democrat and all that, he should have used some of his structures in Edo state to pass that message not himself, what he didn’t realize is that for us Edo people, we are very proud of our integrity and our uniqueness as a people and therefore we will not want somebody from outside to come and tell us how we should relate among ourselves and I think that broadcast backfired very seriously. 

All those who were involved will be able to understand fully the reasons for the lukewarm attitude of the party hierarchy butane thing is clear many of them wanted to demystify and disgrace Comrade Oshiomhole, they just believed that he should not be allowed to have his way, that allowing Ize-Iyamu to win will be reinforcing the power of Comrade Oshiomhole, that is what I believe.

   But to say that because of Oshiomhole, you will trade off Edo state, APC was very unpatriotic and very anti-party and politically foolish because as it is to recover the party will be very difficult and to realise the fact that this has always been the only APC state in the South-South, it was a very expensive loss and self inflicted loss to the APC and I can assure it is likely to affect the Ondo election. And judging from the fact that the economy has not been stable enough for President Buhari to do most of the things he wanted to do, it is easy to discredit a government in power because people look believe either by imagination or by their own direct understanding the money they believe that the federal government is earning; nobody is looking at the handicap, nobody is looking at the disappointment that he had in the revenue generating part of the challenges of government responsibilities so you cannot say that the government President Muhammadu Buhari is as popular today as it was when it entered in 2015 so realizing all these, it didn’t make sense for them to have traded away Edo state.

   My appeal to the current caretaker committee is that they should first revive APC in Edo state, they must one way or the other revive the three legacy parties that formed the APC in Edo state that is ACN, CPC and ANPP. Because President Buhari didn’t really care about what happened after he had climbed up, the ACN and CPC have been excluded and alienated from the party activities and governance in Edo state.

Internal crisis of the APC

That was a major part of the issue because the one that claimed to be the authentic chairman was pro-Obaseki even when Obaseki had gone to PDP so everything he did, he never believed in APC. Anselm Ojezua was chosen by Comrade Oshiomhole in 2014 as the state chairman of the party. He was out of the country when Comrade Oshiomhole nominated him in absentia, I was at the meeting. 

Oshiomhole believed that Anselm is a yesman to him but he doesn’t know which now played out that in any system, a yesman is not good for a good leader because he is subservient because of what he is gaining and so if the leader is no longer in the position to give what the yesman is gaining, whoever is able to do also becomes his lord immediately so when you see people who are able to tell you the truth, respect them, they are not your enemies and that is the problem Oshiomhole has seen in Anselm.

   In the next EXCO, the party leadership must make sure that all the three legacy parties are well represented in the exco.

  The caretaker committee should forget about the faction that is loyal to Obaseki and PDP, there is nothing you can do to bring them back more so now that we are in opposition.  

Acclaimed popularity of Obaseki

What do you expect them to say? The tide of the time has favoured them so they can boast otherwise what has he done? Whatever Obaseki has done now is still less than five percent of what Oshiomhole did. All the roads that Obaseki has constructed in Benin city put together, you cannot compare it to Siluko Road, you cannot also compare it to Airport road both in standard and in distance covered. Each time I am on Airport road I remember the way he came and widened that road nobody could have done it and so many other areas that Oshiomhole performed wonderfully. 

You cannot underrate what Oshiomhole did otherwise the sins of Obaseki were enough for the people to reject him but they just said whether he is a saint or a devil, it doesn’t matter otherwise what he has done to our tertiary institutions in this state were enough to deny him over thirty per cent of his votes but that was ignored by the people their business was that provided Oshiomhole doesn’t take credit for the election.