I started writing an essay under a similar heading to this last sunday after seeing footages of the inauguration of the APC campaign council which took place in Benin City the day before. For some reason, I decided to delete it and keep my emotions in check.
I still have many fracternal brethren in the APC that I speak with regularly and I couldn’t help but share in their despondence seeing the way the APC celebrated the declaration of the impeached former Deputy Governor of Edo state, Mr. Philip Shaibu.
If not for desperation, there is no way a candidate and his party would celebrate Philip Shaibu, giving him a super hero welcome the way the APC did, as though their lives depended on Philip Shaibu. Haba! Philip Shaibu? A man that so desecrated the sanctity of relationship in the way and manner he deprrecated his benefactor, Adams Oshiomhole, questioning his mental health and ensuring Oshiomhole was deposed as National Chairman of APC at the end. If Oshiomhole did not have a certain grace, he would have found it hard to bounce back from Shaibu’s ruthless ferociousness and callous pummeling.
Even though Oshiomhole was compelled to put up an act, by dancing away in that farce that the APC displayed in the guise of inauguration of campaign council, his interview the next day on Channels tv, betrayed his true feelings on what Shaibu did to him, leading one to wonder the force that made Oshiomhole to play along Shaibu’s obvious mockery of kneeling down for him publicly. The Oshiomhole we know can hardly be cowed by anyone…
Oshiomhole was not the only APC member to feel the pangs of Shaibu,as there were also the 14 members-elect who Shaibu orchestrated their exclusion from being inaugurated as members of the Edo state House of Assembly after winning hard fought elections. Today, these 14 were not allowed to reap the fruits of their labour and have been totally forgotten by the APC and dispensed with. Their traducers, Philip Shaibu and his new boy Andrew Emwanta ( who was very vocal in his attacks of leading APC elements)are now the new faces of Edo APC . As Philip danced around the podium, as he danced to “ofone”, my heart and my spirit went gaunt when I thought about how my friend and brother, Dr. Washington Osifo and his friends from that group of 14,like Hon. Gani Audu, Hon. Kingsley Ugabi et al were feeling. It was hard for me not to share uncontrollable tears.
Why does the APC hate their own so much? Why do they prefer other people to those who have always been in the struggle for them?
Now this essay is better understood when the reader understands those who forced senator Monday Okpebholo on Edo APC members. TO BE CONTD.
Daniel Aroren Noah Osa-Ogbegie is a Benin based lawyer and spokesman for Dr. Asue Ighodalo and Osarodion Ogie Campaign.