EDO CENTRAL POLLS: BETWEEN OSHIOMHOLE AND HEDONISM

Governor of Edo State, Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole is, unarguably, a public space man. He has built an extraordinary capacity for agitations over the years as a labour activist. In addition to this capacity are the shenanigans of propaganda.

He effortlessly deploys this propaganda instrument against perceived opponents in all spheres of the political economy. Today, existent and perceived political opponents are contending with a rabid propagandist in the State's Government House.

This explains why the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has consistently been at the receiving end of salvos that ooze out of Oshiomhole’s propaganda machinery. Little wonder, he has, to a very large extent, succeeded in outright demonization of the party.

In fact, knowing full well that the bulwark of the PDP in the State is Chief Tony Anenih, he had embarked on a mission to eclipse him in the calculations that once he (Anenih) was out in the cold, he would take over the entire Edo State and convert it into his fiefdom.

He has, since stepping in the saddle as governor in November 2008 through the verdict of the court, been taking extreme measures against the elements in the PDP, thereby leaving no one in doubt that his charge was to decimate it.

The boastful comrade governor, as envisaged, would thereafter seize the platform of the popular media to tell the sweet story of how he drove the godfather out of the State or how he buried the godfather.

He actually said that he had buried the godfather when he had not even gone into a full blown electoral battle with him. He was, no doubt, carried away by the outcome of a few rerun polls that held in some state constituencies in Edo North and Edo South between late 2009 and middle of 2010.

On every occasion that permitted political grandstanding, Oshiomhole would boast to the world that the PDP was on its way to total defeat and that the time of the godfather (referring to Anenih) was up.

The comrade governor, who had hidden under the deceptive mantra of ‘one man, one vote’ and had used the machinery of the state to swing the pendulum of victory in the series of rerun elections in favour of his Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), had expected a complete discomfiture of the PDP ahead of next year’s governorship election.

His expectation was a complete fall of the PDP at the just-concluded general elections. That would have given him full self-gratification that he has done in Edo State what Napoleon Bonaparte could not do against the combined forces of the British and Prussian armies at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.

But his expectation was, in the words of the Holy Bible, cut short. He discovered to his chagrin that the man-Anenih, the Iyasele (Prime Minister) of Esanland, whom he thought he had decapitated, was in firm control of his Edo Central Senatorial District.

Indeed, Anenih, according to reports, had returned to the drawing board in the face of a rampaging activist who would stop at nothing to clinch and tuck all the legislative seats in Edo State into the ACN kitty.

The old political warhorse and strategist must have decided to be sagacious in how he prosecuted the battle of his life. He must have realized that solely taking on Oshiomhole in the three senatorial zones of the state would result in the loss of all the zones.

Instead, he must have decided to concentrate all his efforts on Edo Central (comprising Esanland). That strategy paid off. He won the Edo Central Senatorial seat for the PDP. He also won the two Federal House of Representatives seats for the PDP.

Oshiomhole could not do anything about it. But he vented his anger on his political aides and appointees from the zone. He sacked them on the grounds that they were disconnected from their people at the grassroots.

But I think Oshiomhole’s action was precipitate. He was also being unfair to the political appointees and aides whom he had expected to upset the applecart of a man (Anenih) with a rugged and well-oiled political machinery and structure.

If he (Oshiomhole) could take over Edo North because he is from there and take over Edo South because of the inconsistent character of many PDP leaders in the zone, why was he under the illusion that his clueless proxies would be able to take over Edo Central under the suzerainty of a “political iroko” whom he had boasted to disgrace?

And thereafter, to prove that the victory of the PDP in Edo Central in the April 9, 2011 National Assembly elections was not a fluke, Anenih repeated the same feat in the April 26, 2011 House of Assembly elections by capturing five of the six contested seats. Only Esan Southeast Constituency seat was lost by a small margin to the ACN.

Two developments are significant in the State Legislative elections in the zone: one, the current Speaker, Bright Omokhodion (who dramatically, even if premeditative, defected from the PDP to the ACN to assume the position in a controversial manner in February last year) was defeated by Mr. Monday Orue of the PDP to represent Esan West Constituency in the State House of Assembly.

The defeat of Omokhodion, who would have remained Speaker of the House had he won going by the existing zoning arrangement in the ACN, has thrown the ACN into confusion. The winner of the Esan Southeast Constituency seat is a first timer who is considered to be too fresh for the top job and there are now moves by the Edo South Senatorial Zone to jostle for and clinch the Speakership of the House in addition to holding the slot of Deputy Governor.

The second was the defeat of the ACN by the PDP in the rerun election into Igueben Constituency seat in the State Legislature. It is significant because Igueben is the home base of the ACN Leader, Chief Tom Ikimi, the Oduma (Lion) of Igueben.

Does it not appear sardonic that the lion could only roar but could not demonstrate capacity to devour its enemies when it mattered most? What would the comrade governor do to Ikimi now that he could not deliver his Igueben Local Government to the ACN?

The lessons from the Edo Central elections should not be lost to any keen observer of Edo State politics. Perhaps, the greatest of the political lessons is that the PDP is still alive and kicking in the State, courtesy of the man that many Nigerians call the Leader (Anenih).

By inference, Anenih, who was the blockade between Oshiomhole and hedonism in the just-concluded general elections in Edo State, using the Edo Central Polls as the battle-axes, has shown that he is a formidable rampart on which the PDP will launch its crucial 2012 governorship battle to unseat Oshiomhole, the tough talking and boastful governor from the northern zone of the State.

Ojeifo is the Editor-in-Chief of Congresswatch magazine based in Abuja-e-mail: [email protected]