Tag: Oshiomhole

GOVERNOR Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State is a self-confessed populist and pragmatist, not a sophisticated politician or rhetorician. He mercurially determined who was elected governorship candidate in his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) primary, and he is also determined, even more vociferously, to ensure that his choice, Godwin Obaseki, is elected governor of the state in next Wednesday’s election. To both ends he had summoned very unorthodox political and electoral methods. He owes no one any apology, and he will not give any; not now, not in the future.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with backing an aspirant and, after that, a candidate. What is sometimes objectionable is how that backing is framed. Populists and propagandists tend to frame their supports in a manner that often offend political ethics. Since he is a populist who frequently adopts propaganda in governance and campaigns, it is not really shocking that Mr Oshiomhole embraces brinkmanship so casually and so unapologetically.

But Mr Oshiomhole is also popular and effective as a governor, and has tended to charm himself with his accomplishments and high rating with the electorate. He took a prostrate state from the hands of the luckless ex-governor Lucky Igbinedion and turned it into a showpiece, though not without sprinklings of coarseness. The state was mired in stagnation, suffocating under the intellectual geriatric, Tony Anenih, and stagnating under the even more vacuous Mr Igbinedion of the illustrious and flamboyant Igbinedion family. Helped by top Southwest politicians, Mr Oshiomhole brilliantly prized the state loose from the vice grip of the Igbinedions and did wonders with it. Perhaps that makes him a progressive, and the enemies he has belaboured in unexampled language, conservatives or reactionaries. Perhaps.

But in reality, populism is not progressivism. A populist may be effective, and in the case of Mr Oshiomhole, very effective indeed, but it does not ineluctably mean he is principled, or that he propounds and promotes great and ennobling values. Populists are often inebriated with their own successes. The Edo governor is not different, and for all anyone cares, may not even wish to be different. He is not sophisticated either, and does not care a hoot what the word means; for after all, the excessive and supercilious ex-governor Igbinedion pretended to a sophistication that did not profit the state when he was governor, and humiliated the family name after he left office and entered into a plea bargain during a corruption trial.

Having met the state prostrate and is about leaving it in high spirits, in fact proud and standing tall, the populist Mr Oshiomhole is failing to draw a line between reinforcing a succession line after his own making and idea on the one hand, and inculcating values and other virtues capable of sustaining the state in the long term on the other hand. He thinks the two are interchangeable. It is known he virtually imposed Mr Obaseki as APC candidate, though the candidate is himself a thoroughbred and a thoughtful bureaucrat. Then he also virtually imposed a running mate, Philip Shuaibu, a young man close to his heart and to his Etsako roots. Had he simply put his weight behind Mr Obaseki and let the primary run freely, the candidate’s emergence would have been less offensive, and his qualification untrammelled by the hoopla and reservations the primary outcome has triggered. Nor, it seemed, would the process have produced a running mate that raised eyebrows in many quarters.

Edo is now left to decide between choosing the next governor using Mr Oshiomhole’s prism and taking a gamble to repudiate the governor and his choice with all the attendant risks and consequences. To choose Mr Obaseki is to play safe, reinforce continuity and ensure that the impressive developmental strides embarked upon by Mr Oshiomhole continue. To elect his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) opponent, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, who had a longer history of association with Mr Igbinedion, and a shorter history of association with Mr Oshiomhole himself, is to take charge of the state’s electoral process, call their souls their own, and begin an experiment whose end they are unlikely to be able to foretell.

The APC has painted the two-horse race as a simple one of choosing between light and darkness, between continuity and frightful experimentation, and between independence and godfatherism, so-called. That dualism, as every Edo voter knows, is an oversimplification of the electoral quandary the state has found itself. Both candidates are well-known Benin sons from prominent families, have roots in the APC, and evoke strong passions in their supporters, so much so that they have managed to split the equally mercurial Benin traditional palace in two. And whether Mr Oshiomhole likes it or not, both candidates are popular and seen to be capable of governing the state. Indeed, it is widely believed that the core reason for postponing the election in the first instance was because it was initially too close to call. Whether the election is now thought to be heading for a clear outcome is hard to tell.

Even if Mr Oshiomhole pretends to ignore the complications in the election, both Messrs Obaseki and Ize-Iyamu have little doubt that the state’s geopolitics makes the election very uncertain. They will speak confidently of victory, but they know that what Mr Oshiomhole has left undone and the people he has angered will constrict Mr Obaseki’s chances. Similarly, what bonds Mr Ize-Iyamu has had with the Igbinedions, not to say his rebellious and uncouth youth, will also stymie his chances. More importantly, both candidates and their mentors know that in the final analysis, the election may be determined by forces and issues that do not lend themselves to straightforward extrapolations.

If the outcome of the election looks uncertain, it is because Mr Oshiomhole has made it so by his overexcited and unguarded statements. He turned what should have been a simple support for his preferred candidate into a convolutedly partisan and electoral chicanery. Then he has spoken hubristically of his determination to ensure his successor does not come from the Igbinedion family when neither the constitution nor the electoral process confers that right or responsibility on him. “I want to make it clear to Lucky that the next governor can never be from the Igbinedion family. The next governor will be a people’s governor and that person, by the special grace of God, is Godwin Obaseki,” Mr Oshiomhole had said when he interacted with journalists in Benin on Tuesday. “Our people will never go back to the dark days and my fight against godfathers has been successful and that is why, today, any Edo man or woman can become a governor without going to any godfather. They (godfathers) are crying and I am happy. They will continue to cry.”

Electing the next Edo governor, whether he comes from the Igbinedion political family or is the biological son of a godfather is, strictly speaking, the responsibility of the Edo electorate. Mr Oshiomhole can campaign, support, finance and cry himself hoarse for his preferred candidate, but it is the electorate that will elect the next governor and live with that choice. Mr Oshiomhole has contaminated that process by the way he has carried himself in the race so far. It does not bode well for the state when a departing governor goes beyond normal partisan boundaries to assume the infallible place of the electorate. It is hoped Edo will choose right in the election. But if they choose wrong, as Nigeria itself has discovered sadly and repeatedly, they have the right to correct their mistakes in subsequent elections. That right, that freedom to choose, must never be alienated, not by Mr Oshiomhole, even if he were a clairvoyant, nor by anyone at any level, as ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo carelessly and foolishly did in 2007.