I find it quite disgusting and distressing, ever to be compelled to discuss tribal issues in an ethnically homogeneous state as ours.
We Edo people are essentially one, and virtually every community in our state can trace its ancestry to the same origin. Whether Esan, Etsako, Owan, and, to a large extent, Akoko-Edo, we are all sons and daughters of the Benin Kingdom.
This explains why every Edo person who is fortunate to ascend to a position of civil authority, where he or she commands official powers, threads with caution so as not to, in any manner, exercise those powers in a way that they conflict with the influence or undermine the reverence for the Oba, who is the undisputed paramount ruler of all Edo people.
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, in and out of office, has been particularly sensitive to this sentiment. In my many years of working closely with Comrade Oshiomhole, I have observed some of his characteristics, which I can attest to, without fear of contractiction.
One of them is his zero tolerance to any discussion that attempts to discriminate among Edo people. He does not take for granted that everyone around him understands this sentiment. Instead, he takes time to impress on them at every opportunity, that the only considerations that determine those he brings into his circle are resourcefulness and competence.
Of course, there have been instances when Afemai persons murmur that he sorrounds himself more with Benin people, than with “our people”. His reply has been consistent and emphatic, that without the support of the Benin people, he would not have been governor in the first place.
He goes further to emphasize that the Benin palace has never discriminated against him but treats him as a son of the soil, which was instrumental to his successes as governor.
One does not have to look too far to know that Comrade is a totally detribalised man who never cosiders ethnicity when dealing with people.
As the national chairman of APC, Oshiomhole had more Benin people as his official aides than Afemai people. This can be verified.
Also, in the just concluded campaign for his Senate race in Edo North, persons from Edo South were prominently visible among those around him, even though there were capable hands in Afemai that could do what they were doing for the campaign.
He took a previously unknown artist from Benin City and put him on national stage as hype man for the Tinubu campaign rallies in Edo, Imo, Anambra, etc, giving him an exposure that he never imagined. This is essentially who Oshiomhole is; giving opportunities and elevating anyone who is fortunate to be in his circle, at the right time, irrespective of where the person comes from.
It is therefore irrational, unfair, and sad, that in the last couple of days, especially since after the results of the presidential and national assembly election showed that Edo people have rejected Godwin Obaseki and his factional PDP, the social media space has been flooded with all sorts of concocted stories, all indicating a concerted, sponsored campaign to misrepresent the outcome of the election in our state, as an attempt by Oshiomhole to impeach the governor.
No one seems to see the outcome of the election for what it is; a rovolt against Godwin Obaseki and Philip Shaibu for their insensitivity, callousness and high handedness towards Edo people.
Is it not curious that before the election Godwin Obaseki and Philip Shaibu were all about the place boasting that they were going to humiliate, retire and bury Adams Oshiomhole from politics, then suddenly turn around after the election results became public, to accuse the same Oshiomhole of planning to impeach them from office?
The truth is that their loud cry of impending impeachment has no basis whatsoever, and they know it. It is one more ploy of their hackneyed, desperate but miserable attempts to hoodwink Edo people into believing their lies again, just for the sake of their own self-preservation.
They have used this same trick over and over again, and Edo people have fallen for it, only to be betrayed once they’ve been rescued.
Godwin Obaseki and Philip Shaibu cannot be blaming Oshiomhole each time Edo people genuinely exercise their political preferences in a way that it does not suit the mischievous self preservation schemes of the governor and his deputy.
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as the leader of APC in Edo State, has a right to campaign for candidates of his party and that’s exactly what he is doing. He is not interested in the impeachment of Godwin Obaseki and his deputy Philip Shaibu. In fact, it is in the interest of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and the APC in Edo State that Godwin Obaseki completes his two full tenures as governor without interruption.
This is the only way a comparative analysis of his administration and that of his predecessors can be done, for Edo people to understand the true essence of why Godwin Obaseki as governor, is seen as the worst thing that ever happened to Edo State. Anyone thinking of impeachment for Obaseki is inadvertently offering Obaseki a soft landing from his monumental failures as governor.
With Eighteen months left before the end of his tenure, Obaseki will not be impeached. He should be allowed to complete the Gelegele Seaport with his China Harbour partners.
He should be given left to complete the Airport he promised us in Uzairue so that I, too, can now fly directly from Abuja and land in Uzairue and take Okada ride to my village.
We should give his Malaysian friends time to complete the University of Innovation in Benin City. What about the Fabrication Village, the Digital Transformation with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the partnership with GIZ-SEDEC Cluster Human Capital Development, the Tech Hub, Industrial Park etc.
We should allow Godwin Obaseki to use his remaining eighteen months in office to complete them without interruption or accept that he deceived Edo people with his over 300 MoUs.
But Edo State also needs an independent parliament. We cannot write off our rights to choose the people we want to make our laws in parliament, simply because we want Obaseki to complete his tenure in office.
This is the crux of the matter. In 2019, Godwin Obaseki used the fear of impeachment to prevent the inauguration of an independent parliament in Edo State. We are all witnesses to what happened.
So, no matter how one decides to interpret the circumstances that led to 14 members who we duly elected to serve being denied the right to represent their constituencies till date, the fact remains that it has never happened in Nigeria before now. It was a rape on democracy and we know who raped our democracy in Edo State.
One day, the whole truth will be revealed and they will be made to account for their roles, in or out of office.
My question is, what did Edo people gain from a parliament of 10 members who were nothing more than glorified SSAs to the governor? Ambrose Alli University lecturers will have a story to tell about the consequences of an Edo State House of Assembly run by the governor.
Enough is enough. We must not allow Godwin Obaseki to once again blackmail us with his unfounded fear of impeachment.
Nobody is out to impeach him. But he should understand that impeachment is part of our constitution. It was put in our Constitution to serve as a check and balance mechanism for the governor and his deputy. He swore to defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, including its impeachment clause.
The only way to avoid impeachment is for a governor and his deputy not to commit impeachable offences. There is no way a governor or his deputy can be impeached if they do not commit impeachable offences.
Only recently, there was a motion of impeachment moved against President Buhari in the National Assembly. He did not blackmail anyone with it or cry to his Fulani tribe and ask them to save him from those who want to impeach him. The only reason why Buhari was not impeached is that he was gound not to have committed impeachable offences.
Oshiomhole is not contesting to be a member of the Edo House of Assembly, so there is no way he would have the powers to impeach the governor or his deputy. This whole idea that Oshiomhole wants to impeach Obaseki is being fueled by ignorance. Edo people are being taken as so uninformed that they really believe Oshiomhole can wish that Godwin Obaseki be impeached and gbam Obaseki is impeached.
Godwin Obaseki has done everything humanly possible to bring down Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, who incidentally is his benefactor, but he has failed.
Adams Oshiomhole, by the grace of God, is in a better position to help the people of Edo State right now than Godwin Obaseki. Oshiomhole has elevated more Benin people than Godwin Obaseki.
Is it not an irony, that each time Oshiomhole wants to elevate a Benin person, Godwin Obaseki runs to Benin people crying for help to join him bring the Benin person down because it is Oshiomhole that wants to elevate him?
If not for those he brought down with the help of his Benin sympathisers, Oshiomhole used his position as National Chairman of APC to place Benin people in positions where Benin Kingdom would have been more developed than it is today.
Ironically, most of the attrocities committed by Godwin Obaseki were in Edo South and against Benin people.
The demolition of private properties, the forceful acquisition of land, the embarrassing detention of a prominent aide to our paramount ruler, the closure of institutions and sack of government employees, the insistence of domiciling returned Benin Artefacts in a museum privately managed by his friends, against the wish of the Benin palace to have them domiciled in the Royal Museum within the palace where they were stolen from in the first place, etc were in Edo South. Do these abuse of powers show the character of a man who loves his Benin people?
Let’s call a spade a spade, Godwin Obaseki is devishly smart. He knows that with the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as president-elect, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole is back in the parlour of powers, not even the corridors.
He knows that Oshiomhole, being who he is, will use any opportunity that presents itself to elevate a new set of Benin people. This is what scares Obaseki most, the rise of any Benin person outside his influence.
So he has recruited his social media urchins, some of whom he forced out of Benin City into exil abroad. Their assignment is to instigate a cyber ethnic mobbing of Adams Oshiomhole so as to drive a wedge between him and his Benin friends.
The ultimate goal is that Oshiomhole should be made to believe that the Benin people don’t like him and will always align with their own person when there is a fight between him and a Benin person.
The success of this mischievous campaign will depend on how Edo South people accept Godwin Obaseki’s false claims that Oshiomhole wants to impeach him.
If this beggerly pseudo ethnic campaign is enough to sway Edo South voters towards Obaseki and his factional PDP that they rejected just two weeks ago, then Godwin Obaseki does truly have the “mumu button” of Edo South voters.
If Edo South people want to place ethnic sentiments above the atrocious desecration of all that they cherish as a people.
Let them give Godwin Obaseki another parliament that listens only to him this time when he has no election to contest again. It will surely be to their own detriment, and their cries of betrayal will be louder this time.
Victor Oshioke, a media aide to comrade Adams Oshiomhole, writes from Abuja.