Obaseki’s Boomerang fights with ‘Obidients’ and NUJ

Mr. Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki, the unsmiling and flammable incumbent governor of Edo State, Nigeria may have eaten the pounding heart of a mad Cow or of a Gorilla, the barrel-chest fighter of the concrete jungle. Else, why is he freely disposed to pugilism and violence? He fights with his kin and friends, as he does to his foes. He spares not even those who gave him a ladder to rise. For their load of love for him he pays back with ingratitude. With whom has Obaseki not done a blameworthy combat?

Recently, the governor again ignited two different rows at once. With the ‘Obidients’ and Edo State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). These tended to be the severest of the numerous street fights which ‘Lion’ Obaseki can’t contain nor win. In Edo, he had always laid landmines, resulting in the rules of the muscles and grimes.

The ‘Obidients’, mostly populated by the youth, are a mass of redemptive people-oriented activities centered on Mr. Peter Obi, the sharp, but polished presidential candidate of the Labour Party. The ‘Obidents’ are determined on a mass push for a better Nigeria, where credible democracy and the rule of law will be long-lasting orders, from the deep valley, in which scatterbrain politicians, like Governor Obaseki, have plunged hapless Nigerians.

This time around, Mr. Obaseki had stirred the beehive with his public gibe that the ‘Obidients’ are a rag-tag assemblage of unserious youths, who will soon be burnt out and abandon Peter Obi’s presidential bid. Funnily, this is the same Obaseki, who had severally cautioned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and his main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) were doomed, because the ‘Obidients’ were afoot and bound to vote in an Obi’s presidency, if nothing fast was done by the two parties.

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And in attempts to frustrate the Obi’s victory moves, Governor Obaseki denied LP the use of public venues to hold all P’s rallies, including its presidential rally, held in Benin and some Edo towns, recently. Earlier on, he also tried to dim the ‘Obidients’ electoral fortunes, by buying over, with the public’s money, all the open billboards and advertorial spaces so that LP and other parties could have limited opportunities to sell their candidates. Grinning with juvenile satisfaction, the governor angered the public with his braggadocio comments that there was nothing wrong, buying over all the advert spaces.

Interestingly, Mr. Julius Abure, the Edo-born national chairman of the LP, lashed out at the governor’s antics, regarding him as “speaking from both “mouth’, a euphemism for doublespeak, deceit and worthlessness. The soft spoken and courageous Abure, who is much liked by Nigerians for shepherding LP and having prepared the grounds for the joint ticket of Obi and Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, couldn’t have mistaken in his assertion.

Naturally, Governor Obaseki has a public notoriety for errant political adventurism, as he dislikes sowing but prowls about to harvest the sweat of the brow of others and in turn destroy the sowers. Verily and once upon a time, he deceitfully wrestled a first tenure governorship ticket of Edo APC and ruined it. Stalwarts of the Edo APC still nurse the festering sore he inflicted on them.

Not done with his rebellious politicking, the governor’s swerve from APC to the PDP and had not given the party respite. He couldn’t manage the success of retaining the governorship seat he regained under the party. But, his protracted imbroglio with the PDP seems hydra-headed. The holder of the ‘Warmonger Governor of the Year’ award, met his match (if not his superior) in Chief Dan Orbih, a strong politician and national vice chairman of PDP. However, the nicknames of ‘Emanton’ (Iron Rod) given to the governor and Chief Orbih as the ‘Iron Bender’, by the public, attest to this.

Edo LP had been wary of Obaseki and his stigmatic dealings with APC and PDP. Therefore, the Abure’s party faithful, with some hard learning, had earlier snubbed the known antics of the governor and his nomadic followers, when they similarly tried to sneak into Edo LP, sensing that they are now unwanted in the PDP. Twice beaten, once shy. Once after assisting ex-governor Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to win, in a stormy election and protracted court trials, Mr. Obaseki and two of his musketeer friends plotted the exclusion of Edo LP and its followers from that government. Until today, the same two undertakers of a Deputy Governor and Secretary to the State Government (SSG), co-joined the governor in the same renegade politics that had overwhelmed the state.

The brashly first citizen had also incensed the Edo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). He simply told off the union of pen-pushers that his bulldozers were on the way to pull down their edifying secretariat buildings, with his tricks to grab for himself and his business front, the expanse land it is built, at the highbrow of Benin, the state capital. Obaseki’s untenable alibi to grab the land was that they are illegal structures on illegally acquired land.

Controvertibly, the NUJ’s land were ceded and built by the old state government in the 1970s. Fortunately, the watchdog journalists certainly know they had to confront the governor, head-on, leading Obaseki to a denial of the moves. Else, the NUJ would have been the newest in the long queues of the victims of the governor’s bulldozers treatment.

The teeming and ubiquitous leg-walkers called the ‘Obidients’ include the governor’s once go-gaga mob called the ‘Torgbas’. After assisting him to a second term in office, they presently look the LP’s direction when it dawned on them that Obaseki, the man they so much trusted with their volunteerism and bulky votes had derailed.

And from Edo, a state that is apt to its ‘Nation’s Heartbeat’ nickname, Obaseki’s needless confrontation with the ‘Obidients’, NUJ, wrongful destruction and grabbing of state’s monuments by the governor, could ignite more crisis fiercer than the EndSARS.

‘Okuoimose!’ Fights can’t be attractive. The Edo people would reason, adding that dirty fights break the nose or the teeth or both. Mr. Obaseki may feign ignorance of the Edo language and the nicety of the foregoing analogy. But, he, being the touted university graduate of English, will know the import of violence or fervor. For Franz Fanon, in his epic book, ‘Black Skin White Mask’ tells all that “fervor or violence is the choice weapon of the impotent”.

There is a price-tag when a man oversteps his bounds. And by Edo folklore, Joromi was a very successful man, who dared to wrestle the spiritual beings, simply because the Creator gifted him the things of life. But, he couldn’t contain the foible of the flesh and blood and highhandedness. After flooring every man, Joromi’s utmost obsession was a self-killing wrestling challenge with spiritual beings.

Pointedly, let no one deceive the fifth civilian governor of the Heartbeat State that the mass of Edo people are still his supporters. The signs are ominous, with the mass endorsement of Obi and Baba-Ahmed by the ‘Obidients’, especially through the last and huge presidential rallies of LP in Edo, that were carnivals. Despite the hindrances by a dictatorial governor!