Edo APC’s governorship candidate, Monday Okpebholo, has set another bizarre precedent in a campaign that has devolved into a comedy of the absurd.
At a supposed interactive session with young people at a hotel in the GRA yesterday, things took a strange turn when the candidate was handed the microphone. The cameras were ordered shut, the live broadcast of the event was terminated, and a request was made for all in the audience to halt filming. Even the lights were turned off.
My party has apparently forbidden any recording of him attempting to speak. Reliable insider accounts suggest that they have made the ‘strategic’ decision to hide the candidate from the scrutinizing eyes of the public until the election. This is why he acts as a ‘motor boy’ at rallies, while others speak for him, and he has refused to grant interview requests from mainstream and independent media.
On one remarkable occasion, a journalist had to remind one of the party leaders that it is not he but Okpebholo who is on the ballot, and he inquired when the candidate would present himself for cross-examination in the interest of the voting public. If they are turning off cameras and lights at interactive sessions, the answer to this question is perhaps never.
It must be stated that the APC in Edo has chosen a path that runs counter to logic. A party’s candidate should ordinarily be its pride and most marketable asset. But they know the man they have chosen in a botched primary process is a liability, not an asset. So, instead of placing him in the spotlight at every given opportunity, they treat engagements with him like the proceedings of a secret cult.
Any party that hides its candidate from the public does not plan to win by legally acquired votes. Its trust is in something else, perhaps ‘federal might’ or the intimidating power of the ‘lions and tigers’. Edo people must beware, and members of the APC in Edo should examine their conscience. How did a party full of smart, capable men come to be represented in an important election by an unlettered buffoon?
These men pretend to clamor for good governance while they settle for an obviously incompetent candidate because he agreed to be a puppet. They purportedly detest election rigging but wait for Abuja to install their puppet in office.
The same puppet has the gall to question the performance of the incumbent administration in Edo, forgetting that he is a sitting Senator with no achievements to his name. He has accused his opponent of serving as the economic adviser to the administration but has failed to substantiate the claim. Okpebholo has found comfort in the shadows where men of questionable character operate, and from where he intermittently produces incoherent and incomprehensible mutterings.
This man is unfit for office; the fact that he stands as a candidate of a major party indicts us all. It shows we are not ready for good governance. Electing him would be an insult taken too far. The people must succeed where members of the APC failed. They must punish this depraved style of politics with their votes while remaining on guard to protect their votes from the ‘lions and tigers’ the APC is assembling.