By Emmanuel Aziken

After years of consistent snub by the political powers that direct Edo State, the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun was penultimate Thursday, formally honoured at home at a reception in Benin.

The reception organized by the Benin National Congress was convincingly the first time that Odigie-Oyegun would be accorded his due in Edo State since the advent of the fourth republic.

National Chairman APC, Chief Odigie Oyegun briefing State House Correspondents after a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House, Abuja. Photo by Abayomi Adesida

A former federal permanent secretary, the first civilian governor of Edo State, a credible NADECO activist, a former vice-presidential candidate, and the first substantive national chairman of the ruling APC, he should have been more than regarded in his native state.

For most of the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic, Odigie-Oyegun  stood out among the political class with his pointed rebuff of the politics of bread and butter with his stoic refusal to follow the crowd to the former ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP.

He is also about the longest surviving national chairman of a party in control of the government, having survived for nearly four years; more than any national chairman of the PDP stayed in office!

But why has Odigie-Oyegun despite his laurels been seemingly disregarded by the political forces at home in Benin and even in Abuja?

The measure of disregard was aptly conveyed at the penultimate Thursday reception by the low level representation of the executive and legislative branches of the Edo State government. Interestingly, both arms of government in the state are controlled by his party.

An occasion where governors and party chieftains should have been outdoing one another to show their loyalty to the national chairman was contemptuously boycotted by senior operatives of the Edo State government. Governor Godwin Obaseki was represented by his special adviser on political matters, Chief Osaro Idah. His deputy was absent and so were all the state’s commissioners.

Only one of 20 APC members of the State House of Assembly, Chris Okaeben showed up.

Those in the know claim that this behaviour started with the Adams Oshiomhole regime which preferred Chief Tom Ikimi for national chairman.

It is alleged that Ikimi as chairman of the APC Merger Committee had in a bid to grab the party from Asiwaju Bola Tinubu influenced the zoning of the office of national chairman to the South-South apparently with the mind that he would be a shoo-in for the position.

However, Tinubu served Ikimi the comeuppance by projecting Odigie-Oyegun for the office against the desire of the Oshiomhole crowd.

Political stakeholders sometimes claim that the Oshiomhole regime’s alienation from Odigie-Oyegun was because he was made national chairman at the instance of a “foreign god” that is not worshiped in Edo. Tinubu’s effort even unbeknown to Odigie-Oyegun was at the prompting of the late Dr. Sam Ogbemudia.

Even with Ikimi out of the APC, trouble makers in Edo State from time to time push different tales of Oshiomhole’s “plots” to take Odigie-Oyegun’s job as national chairman.

The one opportunity that Odigie-Oyegun had to punish his local scorners in Benin was at the time of the Edo governorship primaries in 2016. Though he stood firm in his vows not to allow the manipulation of the primaries, Odigie-Oyegun, however, stood arms akimbo as Oshiomhole pushed his succession agenda to fruition.

Odigie-Oyegun was helpless in the sense that the presidency that ordinarily should have supported him stood aloof, reflective of the distance between him and the president.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s “story” with Odigie-Oyegun it is claimed, flowed from their days in the now-defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP when he, Odigie-Oyegun, paired with Ibrahim Shekarau in the schemes that eventually forced Buhari to found his political party, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC.

Though Buhari and Odigie-Oyegun from time to time spurt their relationship with profusions of loyalty, suspicions of the past are difficult to sweep away.

So, constrained by his limited leverage in the presidency, the national chairman has apparently been unable to use his powerful office to bully anyone at home.

But whatever his critics would say of him, Odigie-Oyegun has been consistent in his politics, and is easily the brand who cannot hurt you even if he cannot help you.