The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Trump’s neo-shit hole

    Trump’s neo-shit hole

    Hardball

     

    FOLLOWING the Edo poll, many Nigerians, socialized into believing the worst in themselves, have claimed the election went the way it did because Uncle Sam had bared its fangs, in visa bans and allied sanctions, to put in check some political powers and principalities.

    That may well be.  But other dynamics too could have driven the result.  It’s good, though: that Nigerian democracy is no longer on life support!  That “either-we-win-or-they-lose” syndrome is the real threat to Nigeria’s democracy.  As PDP now enjoys its win, let it endure other possible future losses.  Elections are no do-or-die.  You win some.  You lose some.  Life continues.

    Still, Uncle Sam must realize that beyond the crude projection of global power, he is losing the chip on his shoulders, as self-appointed cop of global democracy — and the very proof is Donald Trump, sitting American president.

    Trump once claimed — and many Nigerians, to express angst, personal or political — eagerly gulped the stuff: that Nigeria was a shit hole.

    But little did these denizens realize the same Trump, by words and by deed, would soon crown his own “God’s own country”, as unrepentant shit hole of global democracy — and Trump himself is the unapologetic ambassador-in-chief.

    Asked to commit to the result of the US presidential election, billed for November 3, in which he trails in the polls to Joe Biden, his Democratic Party challenger, Trump balked.  He instead lunched into unproved allegations about mail voting and all the demons he had conjured over it, despite no proof to sustain any, except as bluster, to grandstand to his base.

    If all these are not troubling signs, of the making of a neo-democracy shit hole, but not from the so-called Third World Trump and other condescending westerners love to strafe, Hardball doesn’t know what it is.

    But the American president arrived this unflattering juncture, in quite some wild style.  First, he wanted the elections postponed, scared stiff by unfavourable poll returns.  Wait!  Was that from Trump — or from some Third World tin god?

    When that idea was contemptuously shouted down, President Trump embarked on his mail ballot screeds and screeches.  On that, the US Post Office, which his critics say is in the hands of a crony, became the new battleground for partisan politics.

    The latest in the Trump battles, en route to November 3, is the US Supreme Court, following the passing of progressive jurist, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and Trump’s insistence to replace her right away, so that a conservative-leaning judge could be in-situ, should November 3 need any judicial seal!

    Now, again, is it the so-called Third World, or God’s own country, degraded to Trump’s own country?

    Folks have little doubt that America has robust institutional checks to checkmate any rascality.  But the shock is that it is happening at all; and an American president is going into over-drive to de-legitimize America’s own presidential election!

    “The only way we can lose this election,” Trump screeched to his base on the stumps, “is if it is rigged!”  Pray, is that the American version of PDP’s “democracy is in danger?”

    It’s the ultimate heresy to America’s core canon.  But then, Trump would blame COVID-19 as his ultimate nemesis.  Had he not wilfully downplayed its danger for electoral win, he wouldn’t now be scared and stampeded, for fear of electoral loss.    Trump’s own country!  Phew!

     

     

  • Wrong battle

    Wrong battle

    Hardball

     

    HONEY is sweet and a healthy product for the consumer. When tinged with wormwood extracts, its taste becomes less savory; even then, it isn’t any less therapeutic in quality. ‘Bitter honey’ – an oxymoron – typifies the body of sanctions recently applied by some foreign powers against perpetrators of electoral atrocities in Nigeria: it is honey because it promotes good health in our electoral experience as a country, but bitter because it nettles national ego.

    The Nigerian government beefed with the sanctions last week, saying it considered it disrespectful to our sovereignty for any foreign country to apply punitive measures such as visa restrictions on Nigerians. It spoke against the backdrop of the United States government slamming visa bans on certain Nigerians who it said undermined the conduct of the November 2019 Kogi and Bayelsa governorship elections, with similar measure awaiting those adjudged liable for misconduct in the just-concluded Edo State governorship and imminent Ondo governorship elections. The United Kingdom likewise threatened sanctions against anyone found culpable of electoral violence in the Edo poll and 10th October Ondo governorship.

    In a statement by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, government took umbrage at those measures. “It should be noted that there are ample provisions in our laws to sanction violators and perpetrators of electoral violence and fraud. It would be considered disrespectful of the sovereignty of Nigeria for any outside authority to sit in judgment over the conduct of our citizens and apply punitive measures such as visa restriction unilaterally,” the statement said inter alia.

    Sovereignty is doubtless a sensitive appurtenance of every country that must be jealously protected against infringement. But many Nigerians have always applauded the applied sanctions because highly placed electoral offenders who should be brought to hard justice typically manage to thwart the framework of domestic law. There are far too many cases of grievous electoral violence that have not been requited, or suspected offenders indeed called to question. Moreover, after setting their own country on the boil, it is to countries applying visa ban that the culprits flee to evade the consequence. Hence the sanctions threatened by the U.S and U.K. are actually helpful to demotivate and deter potential culprits of errant political behaviour. Besides, our national experience showed that some persons who should have anchored the enforcement of justice themselves turned out offenders in the past. That, obviously, isn’t a situation that insular sovereignty can redress.

    So, though the tendencies being sanctioned by these other countries aren’t peculiar to Nigeria, it is picking a wrong battle to fight the sanctions. What to do rather is more rigorously fight the tendencies that attracted the sanctions, and the political class to wean out of primitive electoral culture that hazards our democracy.

     

  • Edo: Losing is a possibility   

    Edo: Losing is a possibility   

    Hardball

    It’s over, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it said that it’s not over until it’s over?  It looks like the Edo State governorship election, which took place on September 19, has been lost and won. But going by statements from the loser’s camp, it’s not over.

    The result of the election was clear enough.  The incumbent governor and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Godwin Obaseki, was re-elected.  Obaseki had 307,955 votes and won the election. All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Osagie Ize-Iyamu had 223,619 votes and lost the election.

    The returning officer, Prof. Akpofure Rim-Rukeh, announced that Obaseki won in 13 of the 18 local government areas, and Ize-Iyamu won in five.

    After the winner was announced, the loser’s camp announced that things were not that straightforward. The Chairman of APC’s Media Campaign Council, Prince John Mayaki, issued a statement, saying the winner didn’t win fairly.

    According to him, “Our people were arbitrarily arrested; many of the figures were fabricated. There was illicit tampering with results, to shore up PDP’s numbers and mark down APC’s.

    “Areas where we won, they cancelled the results. They decreased the votes in areas we had advantage. They rejected our results and jerked up theirs.”

    He added: “Obaseki shouted that he was being rigged out and blamed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the initial stage, but that was to divert attention from the evil going on in the field.”

    Ize-Iyamu, the loser, also said he didn’t lose fairly. He tweeted: “I thank and appreciate my supporters, who had to endure many evils including being prevented from voting, for their support and determination during the election. I assure you all that I am studying the results along with other party members and will announce my next move soon.”

    If the winner didn’t win fairly, and the loser didn’t lose fairly, was the election free and fair? Of course, the winner is not complaining. Of course, the loser is complaining. Why do losers always complain after losing? It’s a predictable response in Nigerian politics.

    In this country, election losers rarely accept that they were defeated fairly, even when it is fair to say they lost fairly. It is unsurprising that Ize-Iyamu’s camp is unwilling to accept that he lost the election. It would have been strange if the loser had conceded defeat readily, without tall tales. If winning is a possibility, losing is a possibility as well. That’s the lesson losers should learn.

     

  • UNILAG: Babalakin stacks own cards

    UNILAG: Babalakin stacks own cards

    Hardball

    ESTRANGED former University of Lagos Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, Dr. Wale Babalakin, SAN, has eminent right to resist any assault on his rights.  That is his natural forte, being a legal silk himself.

    Yet, his letter of resignation from office, dated September 15, crawled with stacking of cards and fawning paternalism that can really gall — even to disinterested third parties.

    For starters, Babalakin sounded like an unimpeachable force, as pro-chancellor, whose oracular words should never be challenged.

    “I led the Governing Council of the university to remove the Vice Chancellor of the university from office …”  and he followed that with a peremptory re-listing of the alleged charges, which gave the impression of a media trial — nay, conviction — afresh, when the original process had been challenged by those involved, prompting the setting up of a visitation panel by the university’s Visitor, President Muhammadu Buhari.  That panel just submitted its report.

    From the tone of the letter, Babalakin appeared to give only grudging respect to the right of the visitor (who appointed him to the job in the first instance) to take measures to address controversies, arising from the actions by the council, the visitor’s own brood of appointees.

    “After calm had been restored in the university [says who?], the visitor acting within his powers, set up a Presidential Visitation Panel to review the action taken by Governing Council,” and added: “I find it difficult to understand how a non-executive chairman of Governing Council could be requested to recuse himself during the visitation.”

    Perhaps Babalakin was making a technical point in law, which lesser mortals can’t comprehend?

    But if the government had frozen the council’s sack of the vice-chancellor for complaints of alleged skewed process, and the pro-chancellor was central to that decision, just as the vice chancellor, who now parades himself as victim of an allegedly faulty procedure, what is wrong with recusing both of them, to create a clear field to get at the facts?

    Doesn’t natural justice demand just that?  Indeed, such an action would seem simple common sense in the circumstances.

    To push his case, Dr. Babalakin went on to list his sacrifices to the university — not taking due sitting allowances and shunning even refreshments, in terms of foods and drinks, each time the council met.  Bayo Adaralegbe, a council member who also resigned in protest, augmented that list by claiming Babalakin had sunk no less than N100 m of his own private funds into the university, aside from being on the cusp of transferring own land (40 hectares), to help Unilag staff acquire own homes.

    These are gestures the university community would be eternally grateful for.  But they are freely taken personal decisions that can’t weigh in on the fairness or otherwise of the Babalakin-chaired university council decision.

    Indeed, these are extraneous factors logicians would call stark stacking of cards, powered by appeal to pity.  Hardball can’t see how these sentiments fortify Dr. Babalakin’s case.

    Let every party to the dispute, in good faith, await the panel’s reports.  But the Babalakin effort appears a ploy to discredit it, even before it is out.  That can’t be fair to the concerted efforts to unearth the truth, in the Unilag crisis.

  • Obaseki: Unfavourable facts

    Obaseki: Unfavourable facts

    Hardball

    Just before the Edo State governorship election on September 19, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and incumbent governor Godwin Obaseki is trying to rewrite history.

    Obaseki’s response to All Progressives Congress (APC) leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who had appealed to the Edo electorate to reject him in the election, amounted to a denial of facts.

    Tinubu said that the governor had prevented 14 members-elect of the Edo State House of Assembly from being sworn in. “Several institutions and leaders across the country appealed to him to respect constitutional democracy,” Tinubu stated. “But he rejected all entreaties.  He rejected the appeal by the National Assembly and the Attorney-General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who enumerated the path of honour and constitution of the country.”

    The drama didn’t end there. “Rather than obey and respect the law, he vandalised the House of Assembly in Edo by removing the roof and pouring gravel on the entrance of the House of Assembly to prevent the 14 members from being sworn in,”Tinubu recounted.

    When Obaseki’s  Special Adviser on Media and Communication Strategy, Crusoe Osagie, issued a statement on behalf of his boss, he merely said that Tinubu’s “allegations about the Edo State House of Assembly and other claims in the broadcast are completely false.”  The spokesman did not present facts to show that Tinubu’s narrative was false.

    It is true, and a well-known fact, that Obaseki spectacularly supported the undemocratic sidelining of targeted members-elect of the Edo State House of Assembly.  Only nine of the 24 members-elect, loyal to Obaseki, were first inaugurated, then two others, all in June last year, in questionable circumstances.  With the deliberate exclusion of those who were not inaugurated, Obaseki’s loyalists took control of the legislature.

    Tinubu observed that Obaseki’s role in the drama demonstrated dictatorship, lack of respect for the rule of law, and lack of respect for the voters who elected the legislators prevented from being sworn in. He was correct.

    Denying the facts suggests that Obaseki is ashamed of his conduct, and cannot bring himself to admit that such things happened with his support.

    He is seeking re-election. He had left the party that brought him to power, the APC, after failing to get its support for his ambition.  He is up against APC governorship candidate Osagie Ize-Iyamu in the election. Of course, he wants to win. But the voters will decide the victor, and they are aware of the facts he has denied.  These facts are not in his favour.

  • ASUU tries the tar

    ASUU tries the tar

    Hardball

    THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) just reached for the tar brush, declaring itself fierce champion against an alleged private universities-Federal Government conspiracy to kill public universities.  Impressive!

    But who doesn’t know ASUU, under its current leadership is, more than anyone, the de-marketer-in-chief of public universities, with its penchant for insensate comments and insensitive demands, primed to benefit no one but its cocky self?

    It’s true. Patriotism is indeed the last bastion of the scoundrel!  Imagine ASUU, as self-sworn defender-in-chief of public universities!  It really must be seeing a drugged image of itself, in a skewed mirror, in a bout of double delusion!

    Prof. Abiodun Ogunyemi, the ASUU president’s bluster, at an Ilorin, Kwara State, town-and-gown meeting, was really rich, when taken live: “The issue is a calculated attempt to de-market public universities, by owners of private universities together with Nigerian rulers.  There is also this attempt to underfund these public universities to make them surrender.”

    Empty emotive blusters often fly on the wings of sweeping generalizations; and Ogunyemi’s “private universities with Nigerian rulers” fits pat into that bubbly frame.

    True, underfunding public universities is a valid issue.  But how has ASUU itself helped here?

    Okay, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Vice, Atiku Abubakar, stand fairly charged with abandoning public universities in their care to found private universities.

    But since their exit, no Nigerian president or Vice President has attempted such outrage.  So, how does Ogunyemi’s sweeping “Nigerian rulers” fit in, as if the Obasanjo/Atiku betrayal was a subsisting official policy?

    It is true: a particular private university owner always uses public universities as insensitive battering ram to promote his investment.  But Hardball here too has lost no opportunity to call him to order.  Aside from him, there is hardly any other private university promoter, that does such frontal de-marketing stuff.

    Even ASUU, that now wants to posture its fizzy love for public universities, how has it walked its gaseous talk, in concrete actions?  Common digital streamlining of dons’ salaries to root out sleaze and other illicit advantages, it is stonewalling.

    By the way, how many of its peacocky dons have their children or even wards in the beloved public universities Ogunyemi crows about, in his amusing finger-pointing?

    Now, it’s COVID-19 season — what contribution has ASUU crack scientists made to getting the Nigerian vaccine, like their peers elsewhere, in the global race for one?

    All ASUU is resonant on is stonewall university resumption, while drawing full salaries for lazing around, if it is not screaming to remind everyone of its so-called strike, COVID-19 be damned!  What cant laced with patriotic greed!

    The silent majority of reasonable academics had better rally to sack this current ASUU executive; and vote in a fresh one, for a fresh direction, which their union badly needs.  Right now, ASUU heads nowhere but proud perdition!

     

  • ‘Justice’ by ambush

    ‘Justice’ by ambush

    Hardball

    Terrorism, or indeed any form of crime, never pays, because there always comes the day of reckoning. That is what the Yoruba mean when they say, ‘Every day is for the thief, but one day for the owner.’ But in every civilised society, answering for a crime must be on the basis of having been convicted for that crime; far less so where there are claims of the suspect having renounced his crime. That is what makes us a community of decent beings, not brutes.

    The killing by soldiers on 8th September of notorious Benue State bandit Terwase Agwaza, alias Gana, rankles because it was not just extra-judicial, but also an alleged backstab of someone who reportedly had renounced his misadventure and was en route formalising his new conviction. The killing seems like ‘justice’ by ambush, as opposed to the civilised standard of justice not only being done – after fair hearing – but being seen to be done.

    Accounts by Benue people said Gana, who for many years had led a militia terrorising Benue and Taraba communities, was killed while he and 42 other repentant criminals were being conveyed to Makurdi after they embraced state government’s amnesty program. The dreaded militant only lately came out of hiding and was hosted to a reception by the Sankera Traditional Council in Katsina-Ala, which was attended by traditional and community leaders. He was thereafter headed with other repentees to the state capital to meet Benue Governor Samuel Ortom in company with the community elite and clergymen who had mediated the truce, with police personnel on hand when the convoy was intercepted at a roadblock mounted by the Army on Gbese-Gboko-Makurdi road. Gana and followers were allegedly picked out of the convoy and led away, with reports emerging shortly after that he’s been shot dead. “I was very surprised…because that wasn’t the plan,” Ortom told journalists.

    The Army have been reluctant to join issues. But on the heels of the incident, the Commander, 4 Special Forces Command in Doma, Nasarawa State, Major-Gen. Moundhey Ali, said Gana was gunned down in a shootout with soldiers. Visuals of slain Gana showed a rifle placed by his body.

    Former Benue governor and now senator representing Benue North-east, Gabriel Suswam, faulted the Army’s narrative, saying inter alia: “Even war criminals captured alive are entitled to certain rights. The claim that Gana was killed in a gunfight needs further explanation because those who accompanied him and saw him being taken away, including his Local Government Chairman, do not believe he was in possession of any arms.”

    Really, if there was a shootout, why was it only Gana that was killed while not even injuries were reported among others present? This killing bears every hallmark of the police execution of Boko Haram kingpin Mohammed Yusuf in July 2009 and should be thoroughly investigated and redressed by government.

     

     

  • Poverty and urgency

    Poverty and urgency

    Hardball

    Nigeria’s political authorities are engaged in yet another development planning ritual. President Muhammadu Buhari has inaugurated a National Steering Committee to oversee the development of the ‘Nigeria Agenda 2050 and Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP),’ which succeeds ‘Vision 20:2020 and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017 – 2020.’ Vision 20:2020 and Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017 – 2020 will both expire in December.

    Buhari said at the committee’s inauguration in Abuja on September 9:”The main objectives of these successor plans are to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within the next 10 years, particularly given the World Bank projection that Nigeria will become the world’s third most populous country by 2050 with over 400 million people.”

    It is useful to have a long-term plan. But it is important to have a short-term plan as well, and to ensure that it works. In other words, the Buhari administration may just be building castles in the air if there are no immediate signs to show that it is serious about its dream to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within the next 10 years.

    Obviously, the Buhari administration will not be in power beyond 2023 when President Buhari’s second four-year term will end. How many Nigerians will his presidency lift out of poverty before then?

    Buhari listed his achievements in his Democracy Day speech this year, flaunting the results of his administration’s social investment programmes aimed at reducing social and economic inequality.

    Read Also: Buhari inaugurates panel to push anti-poverty agenda

     

    According to him, there are 549, 500 beneficiaries of the N-Power Programme, which is designed to empower Nigerian youths for prosperity, and “addresses the challenge of youth unemployment by providing a structure for large scale and relevant work skills acquisition and development.”

    There are 408, 682 beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme; and 2, 238,334 beneficiaries of the Growth Enhancement and Empowerment Programme.

    “Similarly, ‘Marketmoni’ and ‘Tradermoni’ Programmes have provided affordable loans to small and micro scale enterprises to grow their businesses,” he said.

    It is disturbing that more than 83 million Nigerians are living below the national poverty line, according to the 2019 Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) this year. Nigeria’s population is about 206 million.

    President Buhari should understand that he is expected to significantly reduce the number of poor Nigerians within his remaining period in office, which is about three years. That is, to borrow the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “the fierce urgency of now.”

     

  • Holy braggart

    Holy braggart

    Hardball

     

    If gold rusts, what will iron do?” — that Parson’s quip, in Geoffery Chaucer’s “Prologue to Canterbury Tales”, was the swiftest rebuke that came to mind, on David Ibiyeomie’s un-Christ-like tirade-from-the-pulpit, against controversial broadcaster, Daddy Freeze.

    Indeed, if gold rusts!  And those curses, traducement and abuses, were they really from a so-called man of God — vomiting trash, from the pulpit, at his poor, captive congregants?

    Or from some irate virago, letting off spleen on another market woman, who had gyped her of a mouth-watering bargain?

    Or even, from a prized garage thug, muscles rippling and eye reddening, determined to show rival park bullies who really controlled their drug-crazed territory, where they muscle easy money from poor folks?

    If gold rusts!  And to think some of Ibiyeomie’s poor congregants even said “Amen!” to their pastor’s crude vituperations!

    All through his sacred mission on earth, about the only time Jesus the Christ got angry was when he chanced on money doublers and allied hustlers, making hay at the temple.  “My father’s house of worship,” he railed, as he drove out those seedy characters, “has become a den of thieves!”

    Even in the build-up to his passion, after Judas Iscariot had betrayed him, and a disciple let go his sword, cropping off an assailant’s ear in justifiable rage, what the Christ counselled was calm and restitution, even in the face of provocation.  He followed that up by restoring the ear lobe, in the famed last miracle of the Christ.

    So, does Ibiyeomie represent the same Christ, as he railed without class and dignity from the pulpit the other day?  Indeed, were Jesus to look down, he would blurt in divine shock: my father’s house of worship has become a den of braggarts!  The joke is on Ibiyeomie, on his scandalous loss of self-control.

    But away from the pulpit, to the democratic republic we all share, saint or sinner, rich or poor, sacred or profane.  Ibiyeomie’s shocking behaviour was an utter disgrace.

    No matter his problem with Daddy Freeze, for a pastor, in a televised sermon — was it really that, though? — to rail at, and threaten and traduce another citizen, barking to jail the other, destroy him, drag him through the courts as if Nigerian courts are in his bragging pockets, insult his parents, vomit racial slurs because the fella is of a mixed race, and practically strip him of his Nigerian citizenship, lying that his victim was born on a ship in Somalia  — all this is holy rascality pushed too far!

    And to think Ibiyeomie was at best a third party to a scriptural interpretation dispute, over marriage!  Winners Chapel Bishop, David Oyedepo, had claimed the secret to successful marriages was the absolute submission of the wife.  Daddy Freeze had countered: no sir, dear Bishop.  It’s far less absolute as you put it, for the scriptures you quote stipulate some concomitant behaviour from the man, to earn his woman’s submission.

    Now, how can that riposte, even if nettling, become the subject of holy verbal brawl, unleashed by an irate son, in the service — or maybe holy servitude — of his celebrated spiritual father, which has become an embarrassment to everyone?

    Let the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) caution its members.  Let the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Ibiyeomie’s immediate trade group, also pull the ears of its members.

    That you’re a pastor with a captive audience, and cheap funds to fund live television or Internet streaming, does not give you an excuse to levy terror on another citizen, simply because you have scriptural disputes.  Enough of holy rascality!

     

  • Two fighters

    Two fighters

    Hardball

    It is a reflection of the political tension in Edo State that the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, held a peace meeting with political players at his palace on September 2, ahead of the governorship election on September 19.

    The king spoke about his unsuccessful intervention in the conflict between the incumbent governor, Godwin Obaseki, and a former two-term governor of the state, Adams Oshiomhole, which has created a tense atmosphere in the state.

    Obaseki, governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is seeking re-election. Oshiomhole is backing Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate. Obaseki had left APC, the party that brought him to power, after he failed to get the party’s support for his second-term ambition. He blames Oshiomhole, his former political benefactor, whose support helped him to become governor, for the rejection. This is the backdrop as the governorship election approaches.

    It is a puzzling conflict. What caused this bitter fight? Why are the fighters unwilling to end their fight?

    Ewuare II said during the peace meeting:  “I was very sad, shocked; what I thought was going to be a smooth ride for everybody, tranquility in the state, tranquility in the kingdom, turned to unprecedented conflict.

    “I could not believe it that I tried to intervene several times; I even went to the President about their matter.”

    Interestingly, after the peace meeting at the palace, Obaseki had something to say about why there is a fight. He told a crowd in Egor local government area:  “I reversed the sale of Edaiken Market and brought the rates down to the level that our people could afford. That pitted me against the godfather. He said that I could not be a governor. Is he God? Are we fools?”

    Oshiomhole has not responded to this allegation. But there is no doubt that he would also have something to say about the fight, and how it started.

    Beyond accusations and counter-accusations, it is necessary to stress that there is no room for violence in the coming governorship election.  The two fighters should not allow their fight to lead to violence during the election.

    It is not enough for them to say that they are men of peace, as they claimed to the king during the peace meeting. Edo State does not need politicians who merely pay lip service to peace. Peace is non-negotiable before, during and after the governorship election.