EDO 2012: IT IS RATHER RIDICULOUS!
The Saturday, July 14, 2012 governorship election held in Edo State, has come and gone with a lot of pre and post-election issues either being glossed over or completely relegated to the backwaters because the “desired” result has been achieved.
The Peoples Democratic Party at the both national and Edo State levels aptly appreciated the enormity of the salvage job that laid before the party, given the strident hate-campaign in the run-up to the election. All manners of invectives and innuendoes were heaped on the party and its candidate, Major General Charles Airhiavbere (Rtd)
One of the major planks of the ACN/Oshiomhole tag team was the repetitive propaganda refrain that the PDP put the state in dire straits and throes of economic and development ruination in over nine years in the saddle. The cumulative effect of this propaganda subject was that many people were brainwashed into believing that Edo PDP deliberately instituted the harrowing years of the Locusts between May 29, 1999 and November 12, 2008 when the ACN took over the rains of power via a judicial fiat. The promoters of this Goebellian mind-bend did not inform Edo people that it was the former PDP Governor of the State who presided over the rot and economic and development inertia was also the promoter and founder of the Grace Group, the precursor of the Action Congress of Nigeria in Edo State. It is also general knowledge in Edo State political circles that the leadership profile of Edo ACN, at various strata, is actually made up of those leaders and foot soldiers of the then PDP Governor, Lucky Igbinedion, who participated and reaped both frontally and vicariously from the pillage, asset-stripping and outright economic rape of the collective assets of all Edo State people. Infact, Edo ACN is old PDP!
Against this and other odds, the Peoples Democratic Party in Edo State ran one of the most creative result-oriented and active campaigns in the history of electoral contests in the State and beyond. In its determination to allay the people’s apprehension occasioned by the ACN’s strident cocktail of lies, innuendos and blatant misrepresentation, the novel idea of a Volunteer Corps was mooted and established along the lines of international best practices. Volunteers for GC (General Charles) became the active interface of the general campaign set-up with the common people of Edo State who desired the salient facts about the actual issues at stake in the July 14, 2012 governorship election. As expected, the volunteers made considerable inroads into areas considered electorally inviolate by the ACN who perfected ploys to checkmate these vital gains on election day.
The just concluded election was billed by both political pundits and ordinary Nigerians as a clash of the Titans that may result in unimaginable violence of cataclysmic proportions. This negative forecast was predicated upon a self-serving formula that the Edo election will only be seen or held to be “free and fair” if the ACN candidate, Adams Aliu Oshiomhole, win the election.
Conversely and in the calculations of the proponents of this hypothesis, a PDP and General Charles Ehigie Airhiavbere win would have connoted a high wired rigging binge by the party ably assisted by the federal forces of coercion that were deployed to the State just before the election. The carefully rehearsed chorus would have been that President Jonathan, acting ultra vires and in the interest of his party, deployed the army of occupation to Edo State in furtherance of his resolve to “capture” Edo State and add it to his south-south kitty preparatory to 2015.
Students and perpetrators of white propaganda know that one of the most viable sources of offence is offence – one that accuses the opposition of the very negative act (s) that you are contemplating or already implementing.
As a prelude to the elections, a section of the electorate had been brainwashed and mentally – colonized to go up in arms spontaneously and protest via total violence, the result that may favour the PDP in any of the collating centres across the state. The state–controlled Neighborhood watch was primed to be the springboard and engine–room for the coordinated attacks that would have heralded anything short of an Oshiomhole victory.
One very important and pertinent question that should engage the attention and resolution by all watchers of Edo politics is: Why did the incurably –confident Comrade Governor suddenly wake up from his deep slumber of complacence and electoral invincibility and up all ante to rev his campaign machinery even to the point of “importing” serving and ex-militants. The body language of Adams Oshiomhole and the ACN spoke volumes of the mindset and action plans of a man and party that were ready to wreak havoc if the election did not swing in tandem with their pre-conceived notion of VICTORY or NOTHING!
On the other hand, the consistent and programmed campaigns of the PDP rattled and unsettled the ACN to no end – the promise of governance with a human face, transparent and accountable governance and the revelations of sharp practices in government circles and the acquisition of unexplained estates by the Comrade Governor himself amongst other things.
It was at this period that all the NYSC members serving in Edo State were curiously paid a “special allowance” by the state government which insisted that they “must” be used as INEC ad-hoc staff in the July 14, 2012 election. As the adage goes: He who pays the piper, dictates the tune!
At about 12.15pm on election day, (Saturday, July 14, 2012), Adams Oshiomhole addressed an emergency press conference at the premises of Iyamho Primary school, where he voted. He rolled a riot act to his foot soldiers (in the seven Edo South Local government areas) that he was being “scientifically” schemed out of electoral reckoning by Attahiru Jega/INEC through a deliberate delay in the distribution of voting materials. He promised brimstones and fire and relocated to the state capital Benin City, to “take charge” of proceedings. It was a subtle and veiled order to his lapdogs to activate their cells of die-hard apologists in various wards and ensure “assurance rigging” through forced voting by those who were planted to do so using fake voter’s cards (the type displayed by Oshiomhole himself at the INEC/Police/Stakeholders interactive meeting in Benin City just before the election). Others were armed with photocopies of voter’s cards with questionable claims of having used same to vote at previous elections! There were strict orders that these sets of voters “were to insist, albeit violently, on voting or disrupt the process if they do not have their way. In almost all the cases, these people were allowed to cast their votes” by the harried and harassed INEC ad-hoc staff mainly NYSC members who fashioned out “addendum registers” to save their necks. Three cases in point are (a) Oguola Primary School Benin City (PU OLD EBEN/NBlll (b) Ward 12 (Unit 17) premises of Ministry of transport, Benin City and (c) Garrick Memorial Nursery Primary School, Ekenwan Road, Benin City.
These and other areas of large voters concentration were exploited and harvested with this novel extra-legal instrument of “addendum registers” to create a deliberate reservoir for Oshiomhole loyalists to utilize and lead.
On the surface, the “landslide victory” of the ACN/Oshiomhole resonates as a cast-iron one that was not tainted with any negative, adverse or underhand dealing. A cursory view of Oshiomhole’s Iyamho Declaration of July14, 2012 aptly conveys the truth about the exercise as being fraught with anomalies that could not have produced a free and fair evaluation of people’s choice at that point in time.
It is also most curious that every Tom, Dick and Harry are somersaulting to congratulate Adams Oshiomhole and they chose to pretend that the election was “perfect”… they forget how Adams threatened INEC to abandon a legitimate voters registration exercise, they forget how Adams was in possession of fake voters cards, they forget how Adams demanded that it must be NYSC members or nothing, they forget Adams was the defacto INEC boss!
It is rather ridiculous!
Written By Chris O Nehikhare