Oshiomhole: Consistent, Persistent at 70, By Sufuyan Ojeifo

On March 26, 2022, at the Eagle Square in Abuja where the All Progressives Congress (APC) held its national convention that produced the Abdullahi Adamu-led substantive national leadership, the entry of Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole into the arena was unmistakable. The reactions of party men and women were electrifying. The chants of “Oshio Baba” and “Oshio Quake” rent the air. Understandably, it was in front of the Edo State delegates’ pavilion that the mantras were more voluble. And as the delegates chanted, Oshiomhole, in his characteristic liveliness, jumped up, swerved sideways, and with occasional clenching of fist and waiving of the hand in the air, swaggered and danced in response. That was a demonstration of Oshiomhole’s unremitting peculiarity

Though, he is diminutive in physical stature, as he is wont to acknowledge, and as such his leg works are always nimble or dexterous, yet he is gargantuan in his mental faculty, logically and coherently expressive. Apparently paraphrasing Magistad’s “we little people are little balls of power”, Oshiomhole has always taken opportune occasions to attack the allegory of his characterization as a short man. He did so on January 29, 2022 in his speech, which he delivered ex tempore, in Auchi, at the conferment of the customary title of the Oduma of Auchi Sacred Kingdom on the Minister of State for Budget and national Planning, Prince Clem Ikanade Agba by the Otaru of Auchi, His Royal Highness A.H. Momoh, Ikelebe III.

He had also in 2018 on the occasion of a dinner he hosted at the Ladi Kwali Hall of Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Abuja, to celebrate the posthumous national honours conferred by President Muhammadu Buhari on the winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief M.K.O. Abiola and human rights lawyer, the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, adverted attention of the audience to the issue of his diminutive stature when he declared: “Some people say that I am short but fail to tell the world what I am short of.” In a piece I wrote on him about the time he stepped in as national chairman in June 2018 entitled: “APC and Oshiomhole’s legerdemain” to capture the atmospherics and nuances of our first personal encounter at the dinner, I had weighed in with the virtues that Oshiomhole was (and is) not short of, to wit: brilliance, eloquence, wits, logic, patriotism, commitment and conviction, among others.

In and out of office, whether as President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), or as governor of Edo State or even as national chairman of the APC, Oshiomhole’s mojo always remains the same in spite of obvious moves, at some critical intersections, by forces that were (and are) intemperate in their designs to clutter and diminish it (mojo). He is facing one of such political irritations in Edo North where well-meaning Afenmai sons and daughters have insinuated him in contemplation for the Edo North senatorial seat in 2023. His gravitas is unassailable. Fortunately for the Iyamho-born political leader, he continues to enjoy a critical political support, drawing from his bank of goodwill as the pathfinder of APC in Edo State.

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My intervention in and assessment of Oshiomhole’s politics find anchorage in his consistency and persistence. Indeed, Oshiomhole’s sense of personal knowledge and appreciation of the assessment or measurement of his individuality by elements opposed to him discounts, to all intents and purposes, whatever their motives are. The force of his oration and intelligent ripostes continue to deflate the leitmotif of their deconstruction. They cannot tame his restless spirit in constant engagements with and responses to existential socio-political and economic questions.

I had also resolved this issue in favour of Oshiomhole when I submitted in another editorial intervention that he had long overcome all the artificial limitations and emerged as the inimitable public space intellectual that he is. And, as I had also written elsewhere, the comrade is an orator of the very utilitarian hue. He had, without a doubt, prepared himself ahead for engagements with issues that would later define his eon: in labour unionism, governance, economy and politics. He is a member of the national institute (mni) and holder of the national honour of Commander of the Order of Niger (CON).

One should not lose sight of the fact that Oshiomhole was burnished, from the outset, in the “fiery fire” of labour unionism, and therefore he exemplifies and epitomises a mature and sharply-focused leadership, who in retrospect, navigated the turbulent trajectory of politics in Edo State where he was governor for eight years at the end of which he ensured that the APC remained the governing party in the State. The subsequent chicanery, shenanigans, political betrayal by those he elevated from political ground zero to the summit of governance in Edo state is a narrative that could be interrogated some other time.

As national chair of the governing APC, a position he stepped into, unopposed, in June 2018 by the approbation and consensus of party leadership and membership, Oshiomhole had his good and bad times in the saddle. He achieved much more successes than his explicable failings. His purported “failings” obviously stemmed from and were magnified by some interests in the party who were at the receiving end of his reforms to anchor the party on the bases of discipline and obedience to rules and regulations as circumscribed in the Constitution of the party, and his audacious move to return the control of the party to members at the lowest rung of the ladder through the adoption of direct primary election for candidates’ selection in many of the states for the 2019 general election. That turned out to be Oshiomhole’s original sin. Some governors lost control of the party structures in the aftermath of that audacious move and could not impose their anointed candidates as their successors.

Oshiomhole had demonstrated that he was and (is still) wired like a dynamite! Yes, that dangerous innovative invention by the Swedish chemist and engineer, the late Alfred Nobel, which he patented in 1867 and which rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more powerful alternative to black powder. The Oshiomhole dynamite has been more potent than other elements either before or after him that pretended or still pretend to be critical voices in national discourses and/or conversations. Oshiomhole always weighs in with his stentorian voice on issues of public good.

Consider again my understanding of Oshiomhole in another write-up: “He had ripped through the Nigerian polity at different epochs in ramifications that were episodic: at the levels of his robust NLC presidency and governorship of Edo State. Therefore, Oshiomhole must be handled with respect even by those who may think they own him, as he cannot really be privatised or owned. He is not a man given to political chicanery. He is however ready to go the whole hog with anybody on shared principles and trust. In public space engagements that require the deployment of facts, figures, logic and even adversarial stunts, in pushing through positions, Oshiomhole is not anyone’s run-of-the-mill opponent.

“As NLC president, he was the nemesis of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration in the battle for appropriate pump prices of petroleum products and workers’welfare (salary) matters. As governor in Edo, he was a thorn in the flesh of the political godfathers. He successfully contended with their influence to enjoy a two-term governorship and went ahead to install a successor.”

Today, Oshiomhole, just like other political leaders, globally, who are out of power, contends with some existential threats and quotidian political irritations from loyalists who have suddenly found some new leaders or power centres in service of their “stomach infrastructure”. But the good news is that God has endued him with the grace to be able to draw from his bank of political capital and/goodwill to stay consistently and persistently relevant and dogged in his political engagements.

And, in remaining sharply-focussed on his political voyages as an opposition politician before working in concert with others to produce a government at the centre, and the concomitant philosophical trajectory underpinning those voyages, is Oshiomhole’s political pedigree constructed and consolidated, thus earning his badge as a quintessential political leader. The magnitude of his political influence is writ large and therefore cannot be whimsically or capriciously dismissed or ignored as some ill-advised political lilliputs are trying to do in Edo North where, through the magnitude of his influence and goodwill, he locked in over 23,000 votes difference for the APC in the 2020 governorship election to defeat PDP in the zone.

I could write a lot more about Oshiomhole by capturing the ambience and nuances of his politics and leadership in celebration of his significant 70th birthday today (April 4, 2022), but I would like to save the effort for other opportune occasions. Meanwhile, this is wishing the Comrade Leader a happy birthday.

▪︎ Ojeifo contributed this piece from Abuja via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com