COLUMN

As Fubara Presses The Nuclear Button

Published

9 months ago

December 17, 2023

By Festus Adedayo

If Nyesom Wike had read the character portrait of the Ijaw man as sketched by Dr. Percy Amoury Talbot, an early 20th-century British historian and colonial administrator, he would most probably have thought twice before settling for Simnalaya Fubara as his third-term placeholder.

Wike was a two-term governor of Rivers State and today, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. In his highly authoritative 1926 book, Peoples of Southern Nigeria: a Sketch of their History, Ethnology, and Languages, with an Abstract of the 1921 Census, Talbot reserved an unflattering description for the no-nonsense Ijaw race. Hear him on page 333, “Up the various creeks and branches, the waters are infested by a wild piratical set who live almost entirely in their canoes, and who subsist by plundering traders while on their way to the markets, often adding murder to their other crimes.”

Talbot was, aside from his colonial brief, a British anthropologist and botanical collector. Born in 1877, he lived in the creeks for years to undertake his study and died in 1945. While in Nigeria, he was the Acting Resident of Benin Division in the 1920s. Aside from the frightening sketch of the Ijaw above, Talbot went on to say this of the race, “this strange people, (were) a survival from the dim past beyond the dawn of history, whose language and customs are distinct from those of their neighbours and without trace of any tradition of time before they were driven southwards into these regions of somber mangroves,” and in another context, said of them: “their (Ijaws) origin is wrapped in mystery. The people inhabit practically the whole Coast, some 250 miles in length, stretching between the Ibibio and Yoruba. The Niger Delta, therefore, is… occupied by this strange people.”

Many other scholars who studied this unique race couldn’t understand its abstruse origin and piratical ancestry. While a school of thought claimed that Ijaws had a Judo-Christian origin, another contended that their ancestors originated from Palestine. They base this argument on the assumed similarity between Ijaw’s initial name, Ijo, and one of the ancient cities in Palestine known as Ijon. In concluding on this similarity, the scholars drew a nexus between the cultural practices of the Ijaw which are noticeable, male circumcision, ritual laws, and abstinence from sex during menstruation, and Palestinians’ war-mongering and maniacal tendencies. They said that both races draw strength and resilience from their identical link with Zionism. This assumed connection is based on Palestine’s adherence to Mosaic laws, similar to those of the Ijaw people’s self-styled Creek freedom fighters. In the 1940s, amateur historiography also linked the Ijaws with the Benin, Ife, and Egypt and then to the mythological Oduduwa of the Yoruba peoples.

Ijaws were almost unconquerable to the British colonial government, especially the Western Ijaw, so much so that British officers hardly visited Ijaw clans. This was a result of the gruesome killing of the District Commissioner of Forcados in 1911 in the Ijaw communities of Benni and Adagbabiri. Even as late as 1926, there was a confession by British officers in Warri complaining about the ‘truculent Ijaws’ who they owned up they had not succeeded in conquering. Ijaw were also considered to be people of ‘bad manners’ by the colonial administrators because they refused to turn up at the coast to welcome visiting administrators.

In the nineteenth century, pirates gained the utmost notoriety by roaming the seas as sailors, attacking other ships, and stealing property from them. Thus, living true to Talbot’s character profiling, in an act similar to pirates’, Fubara, the governor of Rivers State, last Wednesday pressed the nuclear button. He did this by attacking the hallowed rendering of democratic ethos when he pulled down the state’s legislative chamber, the Assembly complex. Before this demolition, the complex, comprising about six buildings and a main chamber, constructed by the government of Dr Peter Odili, was an insignia of democracy. The Fubara government’s alibi for the demolition, as provided by the Commissioner for Information and Communications, Joseph Johnson, was that the complex had become unsafe for human habitation as a result of the explosion and fire that rocked it in October.

Since the pulling down of the complex, it is instructive that Wike hasn’t said a word. He must have been very proud of his political son who took after his father. Wike’s eight-year administration of Rivers was pockmarked by similar governmental intransigence. In April 2023, after losing his bid for the presidency, Wike ordered African Independent Television (AIT) out of its Port-Harcourt premises and demolished the sprawling building. His grouse was that the owner of AIT, Raymond Dokpesi, took sides with ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar. In May this year, he also demolished the Bayelsa State Government’s (BASG) property which was located in Akasa Street, Old Government Residential Area in Port Harcourt.

Rivers State had been quaking since the disagreement between Wike and Fubara, his protégé, came into the public glare. It became so messy to the point that four lawmakers, led by factional Speaker, Ehie Ogerenye Edison, who swore loyalty to Fubara, sacked 27 other members, led by factional Speaker, Martin Amaewhule, who had earlier defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). It has gone even messier, with several resignations from commissioners believed to have been nominated by Wike and the dual sittings by the two factions of state legislators.

The Fubara-ordered demolition of the House of Assembly was blood-curdling. Never had this democratic governance witnessed such massive propitiation of a collective monument to the god of personal political survival. This act reminds people of Qin Shi Huang, the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. Also known by the sobriquet Qin Shihuangdi, he ordered the killing of Chinese scholars because he disagreed with their ideas. He was also renowned for ordering the burning of books he saw as critical to him. While he reigned, Qin ordered the construction of a great wall which was perceived as a prequel to the modern Great Wall of China, as well as an enormous mausoleum that had over 6,000 life-size terra-cotta soldier figures. He conscripted thousands of people who worked on the wall and eventually died in the process of building the Wall. He also ordered the killing of workers building the Chinese mausoleum for the preservation of the secrecy of the tomb. Whenever Qin captured foreign hostages, he ordered them castrated as a mark to delineate them as slaves. When the blood-curdling acts are considered, they seem like a higher version of the destruction of legislative memory than the demolition of the Rivers House of Assembly appears to be. This is so when you bear in mind that all the documents, memories, and codified acts of the Rivers legislature are today buried in ruins to keep Fubara in office and keep him at bay from the fangs and incisors of his Dracula nemesis, Wike.

In an earlier piece I did on the Wike-Fubara tango (Why was Wike admiring Adedibu’s bust? November 5, 2023), I sketched how Nigeria’s Fourth Republic had been replete with outgoing governors planting their puppets as successors and how this puppeteering had boomeranged colossally against them. It is only in Lagos and Bornu State (between Kashim Shettima and Babagana Umara Zulum are predecessor and successor) where a veneer of amity between godfather and godson is being maintained. In virtually all the states where this godfatherism is practiced, immediately the hands of these assumed puppets, in the words of a Yoruba aphorism, firmly clutch the handle of the sword, they get emboldened enough to stand up to their puppeteers and ask upsetting questions.

The last 23 years of godfather politics in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic have also been sustained by a clone of Niccolo Machiavelli’s political theory, which is in effect a theory of autocratic governance. Machiavelli, an Italian historian, and political philosopher, is notorious for his treatise on governance and statescraft through his 1532 book, The Prince. The book advocated cunningness and craftiness as weapons of political power and legitimized deceptive means as a ladder to climb to attain and retain power. Machiavelli taught that to attain and sustain political leadership, irrationality, and immorality are two major weapons to be deployed. Anything other than this for the ‘Prince’, says Machiavelli, is a catastrophe.

The Wike-Fubara episode however promises to brim with weeping, wailing, mourning, blood, and gnashing of the teeth. Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, Rivers has oscillated dangerously on the governorship curve, reflecting an uptick from the sublime to the outright deadly. Beginning with Odili, a medical doctor who is generally perceived to wear the visage of a gentleman, successful occupants of the governorship stool after him have mirrored the anti-feminist, patently patriarchal Yoruba saying that, rather than the woman perceived to be a witch being weaned of her witchcraft, she has kept giving birth to female children, who are potential witches as well. While Rotimi Amaechi appeared a deadly and no-nonsense politician, he was an apprentice when placed by the side of Wike, a pesky, authoritarian totalitarian who brooks no dissenting voice. Like all governors of Nigeria from 1999 who installed their puppets to prevent roaches in their cupboards from peering out for the world to see, Wike’s place-holding rulership of Rivers State, using his former Accountant General, Fubara has hit a deadly rock and violence is being deployed for its sustenance.

As said earlier, if Wike came to Fubara’s choice as the one to carry his piss-can simply on account of his pliable, gentlemanly demeanor, he must by now be reaping the fruits of his narrow-minded judgment. What Fubara lacks in not wearing a bellicose visage, he makes up for in his piratical meanness, a reincarnation of a sort of Qin. In Fubara is the first time the Ijaw are occupying the Brick House, apart from Alfred Papapreye Diete-Spiff, an Ijaw who was the first military governor of Rivers State after it was created from part of the old Eastern Region Eastern Region. Diete-Spiff held office from May 1967 to July 1975 in the military administration of General Yakubu Gowon.

Machiavelli’s Prince and the cruelty of the theory have since been occupying Rivers’ Bricks House. For the rulers of Machiavelli’s theory, the governor is a ruler and he must act contrary to truth, charity, and humanity. The religious exposition of meekness should have no place in his dictionary. To stay continually in power, so counsels Machiavelli, the ruler should act like a ‘man’ or ‘animal’. When you look at the demolition of the Rivers Assembly complex last week, you can judge by yourself who out of Machiavelli’s man or beast had the audacity and temerity to do so. This is because, for the Prince to rule, it is even not enough to act like an ordinary animal. Machiavelli recommends that he is to act like the beast, the fox, and the lion because he must imitate the ferocity of wild animals. There is nothing like the rule of law but anti-people acts in Machiavelli’s leadership conjuration.
Nevertheless, as dangerous and unexampled as the Fubara meanness in destroying the House of Assembly complex appears to be, Fubara deserves to vanquish Wike as a lesson to future gubernatorial godfathers that they can fool some people sometimes but cannot fool all the people all the time. The resignation galore from the Rivers State government by key commissioners in the cabinet has also revealed the palpable danger in and cruelty of gubernatorial godfathers. While Wike unabashedly told the world that he collected forms of expression of interest for all the state elected representatives, the resignations have confirmed the claim that he appointed the bulk of special advisers and commissioners in the Fubara government.

How Wike will wriggle out of this trap he entered into is a million-dollar question. Already, his fight against Fubara has been weaponized as an ethnic war against the marginalized goose that lays the golden egg of Nigeria’s oil hub, the Ijaw. If the age-long creek prowess of the Ijaw, their unanimity in construing the Wike fight as a war against the Ijaw people, will drill a huge hole in the barge of the fight. Arguably Nigeria’s fourth largest ethnic group who live in the coastal fringes, the Ijaw still maintain their pre-colonial kingdoms of Opobo, Kalabiri, Nembe, Brass, and Bonny which is now elongated to the creeks of Ondo State.

In the pre-colonial time, Ijaws said to have existed over 700 years ago, were reputed to have had early contacts with Europe and were by that very fact more prosperous than their hinterland neighbors. They were however marginalized in the states where they live. The exception is Bayelsa which is largely an Ijaw state. The activism of Ijaw youths who began their revolt against the Nigerian state in the 1990s showed their capacity to fight a war of any hue. This fight yielded fruits when President Umaru Yar’Adua granted them amnesty. The revolting youths had earlier formed pan-ethnic youth organizations like the Movement for the Survival of Ijaw Ethnic Nationality (MOSIEN), the Movement for Reparations to Ogbia (MORETO) and the Ijaw Youth Council (IJW). They also had the Egbesu Boys of Africa and FNDIC. It will be recalled that the Egbesu Boys gained public notoriety when a military onslaught was launched against them during the Kaiama Declaration. It was there that the perception of invincibility of its members grew, with tales of the inability of bullets to penetrate the warring boys, all thanks to the Egbesu deity, Ijaw’s god of war. Ijaws have frightful but notable sons like High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, Mujahid Asari Dokubo, president of IYC who established the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, (NDPVF), and Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo, known more by his sobriquet Tompolo, ex-MEND militant commander and chief priest of Egbesu.

Unlike the choleric Wike who overtly advertises his anger, Fubara is calm, hiding his Ijaw ancestral prowess under the veneer of this calmness. He still projects his underdog stand in the fight while allowing Wike to bark out his bad temper and be seen by the whole world as an unpretentious totalitarian.

How long this fight will endure is difficult to determine. Despite Fubara’s mean demolition of the State Assembly Complex, the general mood is tilted against Wike. Many are glad that he has finally met his comeuppance and the arrogant quills of his turtle dove have been lowered. Where the presidency’s sympathy lies in this whole fight, especially the political implication of government making enmity of the Ijaw, is also unclear. What is however clear is that, like the Yoruba say of one who has met their equal, the pigmy Wike has elected to buy his corn meal kept in a raffia palm-made basket that is far higher than him, where his hands and eyes could not select for him.

Dr. Festus Adedayo writes from Ibadan, Oyo state.

For more Nigerian Breaking News in Entertainment, Politics, Sports and Crime, please visit our website.

COLUMN

Why President Tinubu Always Takes The Hard Road

Published

1 day ago

September 10, 2024

The Pledge

By Temitope Ajayi

Those who think they are taking a dig at the President have been gloating. Their usual refrain is that the man they said built Lagos should build Nigeria for them to see. As Governor of Lagos, the President reformed governance and set the state on the path of irreversible progress.

President Tinubu has never claimed he did it alone or discounted the contributions of others who led the state before him. Some of the landmark projects he started are still standing, and the plans and vision he articulated are still being implemented till today. We talk about the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Complex at the Lekki Free Trade Zone and the transformation that has taken place within the Lagos economy in the last twenty years, and you think about Bola Tinubu, who engineered them.

Leadership is about fixing today’s problems and thinking ahead for years. The good thing is Tinubu did not accomplish all he did in Lagos within a year. The new Lagos metro Red Line being test-run is a product of his visionary leadership, just like the Blue Line, which has carried over two million passengers in the last two years.

No sane person can argue against the considerable progress governance has delivered to Lagos State since 1999. Just last week in China, the state, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated, inked a new deal on the 68-kilometre Lagos Green Line Metro that will move from Ibeju-Lekki to join the Blue Line at Marina. That is another great leap forward: how progressive societies are built from generation to generation.

As Governor of Lagos State, President Tinubu faced numerous challenges. Many wrote him off within his first year in office. However, like a Phoenix, he rose to these challenges as a statesman. This President does not shy away from challenges. He works tirelessly to overcome and prevail. He understands there are no easy choices to make. He has made it clear that he will make the right and intricate decisions for the country, even if those decisions are unpopular. And he has indeed made the right choices that will deliver significant gains for the country and its people.

-Ajayi is Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity

For more Nigerian Breaking News in Entertainment, Politics, Sports and Crime, please visit our website.

COLUMN

Abisoye Osodi’s Diatribe and Character Assassination: Our Response

Published

1 week ago

September 2, 2024

The Pledge

In the last three weeks, an intensely corrupt, irredeemably illiterate, morally crippled political scavenger, who goes by the assumed name Abisoye Osodi, has been launching acerbic attacks on the person, office, image, and personality of the Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, CON, on social media. Accusing the Governor of every crime under the sun, this character habitually throws up stupendous figures and makes bizarre claims, toying with the emotions of Nigerians and criminalizing the existence of the Ogun State Government with the intent to cause disharmony, create tension, chaos, and derail the climate of peace and tranquility that has pervaded the State since the People’s Governor took over on May 29, 2019.

The contents of his verbal diarrhea have been completely unsubstantiated. They are extremely incongruous and reveal not even the slightest shred of financial literacy, education, or finesse. Osodi, who claims to be an indigene of Lagos State, does not even bother to display a little bit of common sense. Purveying figures in billions and millions of dollars, this agent of destabilization and confusion lies shamelessly and with Luciferic consistency, which calls his sanity into serious question.

Without mincing words, Abisoye Osodi is a ready tool in the hands of desperate politicians, a professional blackmailer looking for patronage and money. National security reasons preclude us from naming the Politically Exposed Persons he has serially blackmailed over the years, and it is a fact that his dossier of crimes has long before now resulted in a manhunt for him by the security agencies. He is a Judas who readily makes allegations against politicians by day, then deviously tries to establish corrupt linkages with them at night. Governor Dapo Abiodun has nothing to hide, and no kobo of Ogun State money is ever going to drop into his accounts, which, by the way, are being closely monitored by the relevant agencies.

Taking advantage of the fact that he is outside the country and knowing that if he ever steps foot on Nigerian soil, he will be called in for questioning, the “Balogun of Lagos” has tried to derail second-term governors since 1999. It can be no wonder that he is desperately trying to pin a tag of corruption on Governor Abiodun. This character habitually brandishes pieces of paper, which could be anything from a collection of poems to sports betting printouts, flaunts them before the camera, and declares that they contain the “documentary evidence” of Governor Abiodun’s corrupt activities! What a senseless clown!

He and his sponsors previously used the state of federal roads in Ogun as illogical antics to blackmail and demonize the Abiodun administration, but realizing that the roads are now receiving attention after the Governor eventually succeeded in getting the Federal Government to grant approval to Ogun State to reconstruct them, they have resurrected the issue of the 2023 polls, which has already been decided by the Supreme Court. Osodi, in his criminal publications, casts aspersions on the integrity of the Supreme Court, suggesting that the court did not properly weigh the evidence before it. He claims to have superior evidence that his sponsors can now approach the Supreme Court with. Clearly, he cannot help giving himself out as the errand boy of certain election losers who, incidentally, are currently being prosecuted for vote buying and criminal conspiracy, among other charges.

Taking off his mask and directly addressing the PDP candidate’s father, Sir Kessington Adebutu, he says he has “enough evidence, both video and audio, that indicates that it was your son who won the last election, and he was robbed.” Mr. Osodi always has “enough evidence,” but he never publishes it. The “evidence” apparently includes his pools and gambling papers. It is evident that the losers of the 2023 polls, who could not prove their endless but baseless allegations from the Election Petitions Tribunal to the Supreme Court, have now suborned this corrupt individual to push their case in the court of public opinion.

We hope that when he appears in court, charged with his monumental crimes, the “Balogun of Lagos” will substantiate his claim that Governor Dapo Abiodun bribed the electoral officer with $1 million and asked the Ogun Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) “to announce him winner before the counting of votes ended.” In his desperation to malign Governor Abiodun, this character assassin forgot the fact that RECs do not announce election results.

Obviously, this devious character is being used by certain politicians to push their negative agenda. We urge the public to disregard his tantrums. We dare him to publish the pictures of the cars and private jets that he accused Governor Abiodun of “keeping for Amosun.” This charlatan cannot even lie with some common sense! Abisoye Osodi’s plot to dress the Governor in borrowed robes is dead on arrival.

Hon. Kayode Akinmade
Special Adviser on Media and Strategy to the Governor of Ogun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun.

For more Nigerian Breaking News in Entertainment, Politics, Sports and Crime, please visit our website.

COLUMN

Pertinent issues on Edo governorship poll

Published

1 week ago

September 2, 2024

The Pledge

By Ehi Braimah

On Saturday September 21, Edo State voters will have another opportunity to elect their governor who would be sworn in into office on November 12 for a term of four years in the first instance. The campaign season is on, and the frontline candidates jostling for prominence are Dr. Asue Ighodalo of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP); Senator Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and Olumide Akpata of the Labour party (LP).

The winner of the election will take the leadership baton from the incumbent governor, Godwin Obaseki, who has been in charge for two terms of eight years – first, on the platform of APC for his first term, and PDP for his second term.

As I have argued in the past, every state in Nigeria ought to be an economic powerhouse – just like Lagos State that can survive without the monthly revenue allocation from Abuja – and attract investors, business leaders, entrepreneurs, conference delegates, visitors, tourists, students, and so on.

If all the 36 states and the FCT, Abuja, can transform into centres of commerce, enterprise and innovation, Nigeria could easily become a one trillion dollar economy. What is required of our governors is to provide visionary and exemplary leadership.

This is my major area of focus and interest in the upcoming governorship election. Edo people want a governor who can create wealth and prosperity through innovation and the power of big ideas.

So which of the three candidates has the capacity, competence, wide network, goodwill, global appeal and experience to build a first-world economy for Edo State? Who is the best fit for the job? Who can Edo people – both at home and in the diaspora – trust to lead them for the next four years?

Edo people who have been engaged in nuanced conversations on this matter, are very discerning and enlightened. I am confident they will make the right choice by voting for the candidate who will make their lives better.

Historically, Edo State has been under PDP leadership until Senator Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole became the governor as APC candidate in 2008 after a court process upheld his electoral victory. However, as Edo people cast their votes on September 21, they must look before they leap. They should shine their eyes!

I have monitored public speeches by the key political actors in all the parties. But I am worried about the egregious comments by Senator Adams Oshiomhole who, ordinarily, should be an elder statesman and leader from Edo State.

Maybe he does not know, but Oshiomhole is undermining his own candidate, Senator Monday Okpebholo. Comrade Oshiomhole keeps scoring own goals to the detriment of APC. He announced to the whole world that Dr. Ighodalo, candidate of the PDP, has no home in Ewohimi, his home town. That is a lie from the pit of hell.

He also said that Dr. Ighodalo refused to sleep in Ewohimi after a campaign stop because of “witches and wizards.” Isn’t that an outlandish statement from a political leader? What he tried to do was to de-market Dr. Ighodalo, denigrate Esan people in general and Ewohimi indigenes in particular. He should be told that such comments have political consequences.

In 24 years since 1999, the political leadership in Edo State had been shared between Edo North and Edo South regions. Oshiomhole (from the Edo North region) was governor for eight years while Edo South produced two governors (Lucky Igbinedion and Godwin Obaseki) for 16 years.

In their own wisdom, some of the political leaders believed that political power should shift to the Edo Central region in 2024. But Senator Oshiomhole spearheaded a campaign for Honourable Dennis Idahosa – his favourite from Edo South – to be the candidate of APC, thereby ignoring Esan people. But the plan backfired. Clearly, Oshiomhole did not support the idea initially for the Esan Central region to produce the next governor of Edo State. Esan people have not forgotten that slight.

President Bola Tinubu had to intervene for peace to reign in the party. A second primary, after a stakeholders’ meeting with President Tinubu in Abuja, was conducted in Benin City which produced Senator Monday Okpebholo as the party’s candidate. Hon Idahosa who was initially declared the winner of the primaries before the peace meeting in Abuja, was picked as his running mate. It was a necessary compromise to pacify Idahosa.

Comrade Oshiomhole, a former Chairman of APC and acclaimed leader of the party in Edo State, alongside his backers, tried every trick in his playbook to frustrate Governor Obaseki’s second term bid, but he failed. When Edo people launched “Edo no be Lagos” campaign in 2020, it was a protest response to the well-funded gang-up against Obaseki by the leading political actors in APC.

It was the same tactic Comrade Oshiomhole deployed when he de-marketed Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu in 2016 and subsequently presented him as the best man to be governor of Edo State in 2020. What changed after four years? Oshiomhole has still not been able to answer this question.

Pastor Ize-Iyamu, a great political strategist in his own right, lost on both counts. It is fair to concede that Oshiomhole backed Obaseki fully to become governor for his first term in office, but they fell apart and became adversaries. That was also what happened between Obaseki and Philip Shaibu, his erstwhile political ally.

But you never know the ways of politicians; they can be enemies during the daytime and become friends at night. It’s all politics; that is how they roll.

I have provided this backstory to prove that Senator Oshiomhole cannot be trusted: he is neither helping his party nor their candidate with his unguarded public utterances. Should the Senator representing Edo North Senatorial District be the one to tell the whole world that Betsy, the wife of Governor Obaseki, is childless?

That was another own goal by Oshiomhole as he mocked Betsy for being childless and not adopting children with her husband. Can you just imagine how a man who was a leader of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC); former governor of Edo State and now serving senator would descend to the level of gutter politics. To prove what point?

Oshiomhole’s reckless and perfidious statement set the social media on fire, and I hope he is able to quench the fire. He actually owes Godwin Obaseki and his wife a public apology.

Betsy did not mention anyone by name when she said Dr. Ighodalo, the PDP candidate, is the only one who has a wife. Betsy made the comment when she introduced Ifeyinwa Ighodalo, the wife of Dr. Ighodalo, during a campaign rally at Ubiaja.

But trust Comrade Oshiomhole who has become the spokesman of Senator Okpebholo to step forward to defend him. Why can’t Okpebholo speak for himself? At this rate, we do not even know who the APC governorship candidate is: Okpebholo or Oshiomhole?

Senator Oshiomhole has been pitching Senator Okpebholo to Edo people as the best man for the job of governor. Is he? I don’t think so. Nonetheless, I respect his rights to vie for any political office. Since Comrade Oshiomhole is more or less the face of his campaign, Senator Okpebholo would really have to work hard with less than three weeks to the election to convince Edo people to vote for him.

I have watched Dr. Asue Ighodalo and Olumide Akpata on television explaining their plans for Edo people, but I have not seen Senator Monday Okpebholo on any TV channel. What could be the problem?

Dr. Reuben Abati, anchor of The Morning Show on Arise News, announced more than once that Senator Okpebholo should appear on the programme for an interview in Pidgin English or Esan language with a translator to boot if speaking in English was the issue. Was that meant to be a joke?

If Senator Okpebholo is not ready to appear on a TV show to explain his manifesto, how is he going to talk to Edo people as governor? How can he be taken seriously? Will Oshiomhole or the other surrogates be the ones speaking for him? Although politics is a game of numbers, optics, perception management, messaging and nuance are also critical factors. I struggle to see Okpebholo speak on the floor of the Senate.

Olumide Akpata (Olu D) of the Labour Party brought a breath of fresh air in his political communication and engagement style, but we cannot run away from the fact that PDP and APC are still the dominant political parties in view of their legacies, spending power, political engineering experience and voting blocs. LP is still new to the game.

The power of incumbency will also be a strong factor in the political and power calculus in the upcoming election and Edo people know where the pendulum will swing to.

A dip-stick survey by an independent group revealed that Edo people are concerned primarily about their well-being which has been seriously affected by the current economic hardship. They cited increasing hunger amid the rising cost of goods and services, insecurity, development of infrastructure, job opportunities, and access to quality healthcare.

Edo people also want a strong leader that they can trust to build a vibrant economy. One way the local economy can grow is through destination marketing. For example, Wimbledon, Berlin Marathon, Rio Carnival, Dubai World Cup, Monaco Grand Prix, Paris-Dakar rally and the Lagos Marathon are globally recognised elements of destination marketing and city branding.

In Edo State, Ogbe Hard Court, the famous international tennis tournament, can be revived. Other initiatives such as the Edo Cycling Tour – similar to the Tour de France in concept and execution – can also be launched. Apart from its rich cultural heritage, Edo State has important sites and landmarks that can boost tourism. For example, the Ososo Carnival in Akoko Edo LGA can be turned into a huge touristic showcase, capable of attracting hordes of visitors.

In a previous article, I explained that revenue can be generated by state governments from the assets that they host (rental income), in addition to significant commercial opportunities in music, film and entertainment, arts and culture, real estate development, hospitality, aviation, ground transportation, clothing and foot wear, furniture, agriculture, and technology by building ICT hubs for our vibrant youth population.

As we count down to September 21, I wish to project from available data that Dr. Asue Ighodalo would be the winner of the governorship poll in a free and fair election because he is the best man for the job based on his excellent track record of performance.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has its job well cut out. I expect them to rise up to the occasion. I am also banking on the security agencies to be vigilant and ensure that electoral violence and malpractices such as ballot-box snatching are checkmated.

Braimah is a communications strategist and publisher/editor-in-chief of Naija Times (https://ntm.ng)and Lagos Post (https://lagospost.ng). He can be reached at hello@neomedia.com.ng.