By Tiko Okoye
Whenever I hear commentators aver that the recently conducted Edo State Governorship Election produced neither winners nor losers, I am sadly reminded of the same vacuous mantra mealy-mouthed at the end of the Nigerian Civil War. By my very informed reckoning, the September 19 Edo polls clearly produced potential losers and winners. First the losers in a descending order of gravity: (1) Edo State indigenes and residents; (2) The All Progressives Congress (APC); and (3) Former Edo State Governor and ex-APC National Chairman Adams Oshiomhole, in a descending order.
Edo indigenes and residents
Politics is one area of human endeavour where it is not given to pray “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing”! According to American philosopher Eric Hoffer, “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.” The ballot is the only effective power voters have in a democracy either to reward their elected public officials who have performed well or to replace them with candidates perceived to be potentially better. In the light of this, voters cannot afford to be less sanguine about the type and character of their elected leaders.
At the exact moment when they were expected to think big and subscribe to higher standards of governance, they chose to mealy-mouth meaningless comparisons between Edo and Lagos states. If their argument was that Bola Tinubu ought to restrict his political interventions to Lagos, how come they turned a blind eye to the pyrotechnic rhetoric of Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike who happened to be the chairman of the PDP National Campaign team? Or has Rivers become a new local government area in Edo State?
One would have thought that the voters would have answered the following key question with their ballots: “Are we better off now than four years ago?” But since they adjudged job performance as an insignificant election issue, they can no longer blame a distant Abuja if things turn out awry – and the signs are not looking too good. Here was a governor who deliberately prevented the majority of state legislators from performing their legislative duties because of his fear of being impeached; a governor who removed the roof of the state House of Assembly under the guise of renovations and blocked the entrance to the building with heaps of gravel just to stop the legislators from sitting. The good people of Edo State are now effectively on their own.
All Progressives Congress (APC)
Ever since it displaced the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) from power at the centre, the APC has been embroiled in a never-ending leadership quagmire, lending credence to claims by several quarters that it is an amalgam of strange bedfellows established for the sole purpose of wresting power from the PDP. If you want to espy how having too many fathers can get in the way of managing success, look no farther than the APC, with an array of overambitious young Turks ever eager to prematurely shove the older generation of party leaders down the precipice of political oblivion. The word on the street is that the APC would self-destruct just before Buhari steps down from office in 2023.
Not a few political pundits have attributed the loss of the party’s candidate to the fact that many top officials, including state governors and federal government appointees, ran with Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu in the day and hunted with Governor Godwin Obaseki and the PDP in the night. It was American actor and humourist Will Rogers who poignantly noted that “More men have been elected between Sundown and Sunup (at nocturnal meetings) than ever were elected between Sunup and Sundown (daylight hours).” Those involved apparently equated their own party candidate’s victory to an ‘unacceptable’ victory for the deposed national chairman Adams Oshiomhole and his ‘accord-concordiale’ partner, former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu. It is simply what it is!
Although Tinubu is yet to officially declare his interest in the 2023 presidency, it is now crystal-clear that members of a very influential clique within the APC who have the president’s ear are hell-bent on making his rumoured ambition dead on arrival, no matter what it may cost the party. It remains to be seen if Buhari would still adhere to the terms of whatever gentleman’s agreement he is said to have brokered with Tinubu to secure his support or if he would abandon his erstwhile partner in the cold.
Expect to see the anti-party shenanigans that played out in Edo State replicated in the October 10 Ondo State Governorship Election on a grander scale, given the greater relevance of the poll to permutations for the 2023 presidency. PDP effectively proved in 2015 that a house divided against itself cannot stand – a lesson APC has demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to imbibe. And what became of PDP in 2015 would definitely befall the APC in 2023, if the party continues along the present trajectory that nobody at the upper echelons of APC has the presence of mind to squarely address.
Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole
The outcome of the Edo State Governorship Election was predictable and predicted, if you knew what to look for. In three newspaper articles I wrote, I had advised Oshiomhole to sue for peace as an elder statesman. It was the same advice I had given President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 when the fracas between his wife and Governor Rotimi Amaechi started as a misunderstanding. But just as the president’s men beguiled him into believing that the PDP would be better off if Amaechi and the other four governors were pushed out, Oshiomhole’s praise singers kept reminding him that as national chairman he alone had the power to submit the name of the party governorship candidate to INEC.
There were enough signs to convince Oshiomhole that discretion was the better valour, and that the combatant who runs away lives to fight on another more auspicious day. Despite the constant threats by the chairman of the Edo State chapter of the PDP, Engr. Dan Orbih, to dismiss them for engaging in anti-party activities, many influential PDP leaders, including the likes of Chiefs Tom Ikimi and Gabriel Igbinedion, called his bluff by openly endorsing APC’s Obaseki for a second term. I also reminded him – even as I tried to be as respectfully discrete as possible – that an Oba who, unlike his late father, did not know Joseph (Oshiomhole) was now on the throne. He ought to have known that the new Oba and Governor Obaseki were chummy contemporaries and that this counted a lot in a traditional environment like Edo State.
Unfortunately for him, just like it was for MKO Abiola, Oshiomhole allowed himself to be cornered into a cul-de-sac from where there was no return without significant loss of face and had to fight the biggest battle for political relevance in his illustrious career. There is an African adage that posits that the fly that arrogantly refuses to heed advice will follow the corpse into its grave. Oshiomhole lost out big, but at least he can now appreciate how the likes of late Chiefs Tony Anenih and Igbinedion felt when he ended their reign as political godfathers in Edo State.
- Okoye is a Public Affairs Analyst Abuja 08054103468
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