By Onozure Dania

BENIN — A political analyst, Mr Mark Nkworji, has said that a Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, chieftain, Mr Okharedia Ihimekpe, attacks on Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, a governorship aspirant of the party in Edo State, should not be taken seriously.

Ize-Iyamu

Nkworji in a statement in Benin, said: “Politics is really an intriguing game. It is comparable to warfare where fair is foul and foul is fair. It is only on this premise that one can begin to imagine how some characters could arrogate the title of party chieftain to themselves and begin to make careless statements to impugn the character of some revered personalities.

“This was the case of one Okharedia Ihimekpe. On April 17, Ihimekpe was introduced in an interview in Vanguard newspaper as a ‘PDP chieftain.’ In the said interview, Ihimekpe, whose current role as a mole in the PDP is no longer secret, attempted to stoke up hatred against a frontline aspirant of the PDP for September 10 governorship election in Edo State, in the person of Ize-Iyamu.

“Ihimekpe is that man whom Pastor Ize-Iyamu, as Secretary to Edo State Government between 2003 and 2007, made a Senior Special Assistant to the then governor of Edo State, Chief Lucky Igbinedion in 2004.

“Ihimekpe, as a Senior Special Assistant to the governor, failed to distinguish himself as a media aide to the governor. There was nothing to his credit in terms of achievement throughout the time his political appointment lasted.

“At the expiration of the Igbinedion administration in 2007, Ihimekpe was out of circulation. The last time people heard of him again was during the build-up to the Edo 2012 election as a publisher of one community tabloid. This is the length and breadth of Ihimekpen’s political profile.

“This explains the anger of PDP faithful when a reporter in an interview referred to him as a ‘PDP chieftain.’ Many see this as an embarrassment of unimaginable proportion to PDP. To whom is Ihimekpe a chieftain?”

“To Ihimekpe, the reason why Pastor Ize-Iyamu must not get the PDP ticket is that the Pastor was a ‘…principal actor in the Igbinedion administration…” How this becomes a criterion for denying an aspirant his party’s ticket remains a puzzle everyone expects Ihimekpe to unravel.

“One thing is abundantly clear about Ihimekpe. He has been caught up in the Ize-Iyamu phobia just as his masters have been intimidated by the Pastor’s towering political profile.
“By describing the PDP era in the interview as a period that, “…degenerated into PDP years of the locust in Edo…”, Ihimekpe was attempting to allude that his own party, the PDP, did not perform while in power.

“Yet, one has read Ihimekpe in several interviews where he acknowledged that the achievements of Igbinedion administration in 100 days in office far surpassed that of the present administration’s four years put together. In one of the interviews, Ihimekpe specifically mentioned that Igbinedion’s government within 100 days was able to site a project in each of the 192 wards that make up Edo State and challenged the present government to point to what it has done for the people in the past four years.

“One will be interested to ask Ihimekpe if Pastor Ize-Iyamu, that he now vilifies, was not part of the Igbinedion government that recorded those achievements then.”