Clowns In Search Of Crowns – By Erasmus Ikhide
Seven plus years ago, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole became the governor of Edo State as a result of the degenerate and decadent state of affairs. His dynamic personality, the clarity of his mind, the catholicity of his ideas and his remarkable talents as an organiser and former union leader infused a new life and determination into the polity and the people’s hope to dream anew.
It’s left to Edo people to now tell whether Governor Oshiomhole has lost his illustrious name; become a shell of his admirable former self, dispirited by raw power or has become an intrepid tribune of social reengineering, change agent or out-and-out democrat! Whatever perceptions or views one holds of the comrade governor depends largely on the political divide one finds him/herself.
Today, Oshiomhole is one significant politician who has the same and equal popularity across the divides. Those who admire him and those who despise him do so with equal passion. The succession political battle by the two main political parties, the ruling APC and the opposition PDP will be prosecuted on Governor Oshiomhole’s failures or successes in that last seven and half years in office.
However, Governor Oshiomhole, undeniably, has enviable development records going for him. Since he assumed office in 2008, he has tackled the dearth of functional infrastructural facilities and basic amenities that had turned the state into a living hell. He has repositioned completely a scruffy political system where graft had become a pastime, and a dejected populace in dire need of purposeful leadership. He has restored sanity to a decapitated public service staffed by a disgruntled workforce; and the stone-aged educational system that was turning out ill-equipped individuals without the required productive capacities to contribute to the development of the state.
The Comrade Governor has resuscitated the lethargic health sector that left the sick at the mercy of charlatans, the health vendors who profit from the ignorance of help seekers. He has managed to contribute his quotas by buying hundreds of Hilux vehicles and communication gadgets for the Nigeria police to stem the tide of the mind-bending state of insecurity spurred by widespread cultism across the state. More than anything else, since 2008, Oshiomhole has striven to correct all the systemic woes that had bedeviled the state from its creation, performing feats that have confounded even his harshest critics.
But there is a snag on Governor Oshiomhole’s political empire. “One man, one vote” (or “one person, one vote”) is a name that has been used in many parts of the world where campaigns have arisen for universal suffrage. During the 20th-century period of decolonisation and the struggles for national sovereignty, from the late 1940s onwards this phrase became widely used in less developed countries where majority populations were seeking to gain political power in proportion to their numbers.
The phrase was used in this form in an important legal ruling in the United States related to voting rights; applying the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution, the Supreme Court majority opinion in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) ruled that state legislatures needed to redistrict in order to have congressional districts with roughly equal represented populations.
In 2012, Governor Adams Oshiomhole exhaustively dramatised the phrase in his reelection bid to draw a link between democracy and freedom of choice. He made the point then that democracy is a set of ideas and principles about freedom of choice, which consists of a set of practices and procedures that have been molded through a long, often tortuous history. The point he was trying to make was that democracy is the institutionalization of freedom, which includes human rights; the right for the civil populace to freely elect their leaders in government and equality before the rules. He also meant to say that candidates in an election has his/her own Everest to climb without undue favouritism and manipulation.
Now, a great deal of the electorate are in an irritable mood on the governor’s moves to truncate the “One man one vote” mantras with his rumoured endorsement of Mr. Godwin Obaseki. The believe is that the less well-known Obaseki did not entertain governorship notion until Governor Oshiomhole drafted him into the race, thereby trusting his candidacy down of the APC party leadership and Edo people. There is the for the governor to clear his own name.
At the last count, nearly 30 aspirants have indicated interest to succeed the Comrade Governor from both the APC and PDP, a handful of them mere notional contenders, while many are pretenders who are there to make up the number. From the camp of the APC are the former Minister of Works, Engr. Chris Ogiemwonyi; Governor Oshiomhole’s deputy, Dr Pius Odubu, ex-Governor Osarhemhen Osunbor, PDP governorship candidate in 2012, Maj. General Charles Arhiavbere (rtd), Comrade Peter Esele, the former PENGASSAN and TUC president, Mr. Odia Ofeimu, the former Principal Private Secretary to the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chairman of the Edo State Economic Team, Godwin Obaseki, Commissioner for Works, Osarodion Ogie; Architect Austin Emuan, Lagos Based Business man, Mr. Kenneth Imasuagbon and movie producer Don Pedro Obaseki, and a host of others.
On the side of the PDP are the immediate past Edo South Senator Ehigie Uzamere; former member of the state House of Assembly, Matthew Iduoriyekemwen; Vice Chairman (South-South) of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu and Solomon Iyobosa Edebiri. No doubt, governing Edo State is attractive given the number of aspirants, but the fact remains that majority of them are mere pretenders, who are likely to drop out of the race before their respective parties’ primaries.
The Benin Leaders of Thought, BLT, a few days ago warned against the re-introduction of political godfatherism in Edo state, which they said Governor Adams himself fought hard against in the past. What a turn of the tide!
The warning came on the heels of the alleged imposition of a governorship aspirant by Governor Oshiomhole, for the 2016 gubernatorial election in the state. Some aspirants have kicked and expressed their displeasure over rumours that the governor has ordered his aides to ‘go and market’ the Chairman of the State Economic Team, Dr. Godwin Obaseki, popularly referred to as Dangote man, to the people of the state.
Chairman of the group and Enogie of Obazuwa, Prince Edun Akenzua, while addressing journalists in Benin, said though the group disbelieved the rumour of Oshiomhole’s alleged imposition of an aspirant, the issue has excited the imagination of observers of Edo politics in recent times. Quoting Governor Oshiomhole in the Vanguard of Thursday, November 12, 2009, as saying that “what makes governance difficult is that some leaders are imposed on the people. That situation creates an absence of support. And people will become cynical about you,” the Benin Leaders of Thought said it was against that background that they were taken aback by the rumour that the Governor has anointed his successor in this year’s gubernatorial race.
“The people of Edo State should be given free hands to determine their next governor. Popular participation bestows responsibility for governing one’s own conduct, develops ones character, self-reliance, intelligence and moral judgement. In a democracy, there is no substitute for popular participation. Even if a benevolent despot could govern in the public interest, he would be rejected by the classic democrat. Man can only know the truth by discovering it himself”, the Benin Leaders of Thought added.
Mr. Godwin Obaseki’s misadventure into the Benin historical facts was a miscarriage as much as political mishap. He granted two separates interviews in two national newspapers where he chided the Benin dynasty for not taking his grandfather’s advice. In the other interview, he revealed his limited understanding of development politics.
Mr. Obaseki said that when the British entered Benin Kingdom and attempted to do ‘business’ with Benin, his grandfather advised the then Oba of Benin, Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, to sign a treaty with the foreigners. But all available evidence suggest that the British did not intend to do business with any of their eventual colonies, rather they were on a colonial mission as they did also with Jaja, Nana, Attahiru and Kosoko, among others. In another interview Mr. Obaseki was quoted to have said, “my area of specialisation is (Capitalism). I was born into Capitalist system and it is also the system of governance of Edo State people right from time immemorial and I don’t know when socialism entered the system”.
Now, there are throw back questions to Mr. Obaseki by the Benin elite in this order: “Is Capitalism a specialist area of study in any department or in any academic institution? When and where was the Capitalist system Mr. Godwin Obaseki was born into? Is Mr. Godwin Obaseki Capitalist system an attribute of an individual, a group of persons or the society in which he was born? If Capitalism has always been a system of governance in Edo, as Head of the Economic Team of Edo State Government under the governorship of a former worker and union leader, how do you reconcile the Capitalist system of administration in Edo State with Comrade Adams Oshiomhole’s masses oriented policies of administration in Edo State? These are pertinent questions begging for answer.
Granted that it will be almost impossible to find an ideal governor for Edo State in 2016, someone who will combine the best attributes of Engr. Chris Ogiemwonyi, Pastor Ize-Iyamu, Mr. Odia Ofeimu, Comrade Peter Esele and Dr. Pius Odubu’s passion for the job. The ideal leader, just like the ideal man or woman, is perfectly academic. In the end we will have to settle for a leader, who, like the rest of us, is not perfect, but who hopefully possesses some abilities to make a difference.
Engr. Chris Ogiemwonyi may not possess all the qualities needed in Osadebe Avenue at this historical moment, but he certainly possesses some critical and crucial ones. The most important question agitating the minds of the electorate is whether his personal qualities will facilitate his own definition of the primary task at hand, which is sustaining the development strides of the comrade governor.
Mr. Erasmus Ikhide writes in from Lagos, Nigeria
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