{"id":18570,"date":"2019-06-07T13:28:06","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T13:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=18570"},"modified":"2019-06-07T13:28:06","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T13:28:06","slug":"opinion-imperious-oshiomhole-naive-obaseki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=18570","title":{"rendered":"(Opinion) Imperious Oshiomhole, Naive Obaseki"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sufuyan Ojeifo<\/strong>
\nI haven\u2019t met the governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, before. My closest to \u201cmeeting\u201d him is seeing him speak on television. I also read stories about him in the print media. Until anointed governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2016 election by his former boss, Adams Oshiomhole, he was hardly known in the state\u2019s governance architecture, which Oshiomhole effectively and firmly superintended.
\nAlthough, Obaseki was the Chairman of the State\u2019s Economic and Strategy Team, inaugurated by Oshiomhole in March 2009, he was also hardly heard or seen because he worked behind the scene within the scope of his clearly-defined mandate. Oshiomhole was the face and voice of the government, an inimitable public space man, who offered the essential articulation and defence of his administration\u2019s policies, programmes, as well as its actions and inactions.
\nBut Obaseki\u2019s position was so strategic that it earned him prime consideration in Oshiomhole\u2019s search for a successor that would continue his administration\u2019s laudable policies and development programmes. Oshiomhole knows full well that a sound economic foundation is imperative for a solid political superstructure.\u00a0 Therefore, his decision to pick Obaseki instead of his former Deputy Governor, Pius Odubu, an astute politician, flowed from that knowledge.
\nPerhaps, Oshiomhole chose Obaseki because of his apolitical disposition so that he (Oshiomhole) would continue to superintend the APC political structure in the state once out of power, while Obaseki frontally confronts the state\u2019s governance issues. If that was the idea, it was strategic and neat in the administration of the state\u2019s political economy. But such arrangement has always been utopian in the context of our archetypical cloak-and-dagger politics.
\nGiven the tentative political interactions that characterize relationships between godfathers and their godsons, where parties fail to keep to agreements, there is bound to be conflict of interests that could obviate whatever the earlier agreements were. Vested interests begin to shift positions, thus causing intra-party tension and aggravation. This is exactly the situation in the Edo State Chapter of the APC.
\nIt is either history is repeating itself in Edo or Obaseki is repeating history by his decision to challenge the political leadership of Oshiomhole, the man who handpicked him as his successor.\u00a0 Recall that former governor of the state on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Professor Oserhiemen Osunbor, acted naively when he moved to decimate the PDP structure under the suzerainty of the late Chief Tony Anenih.
\nOsunbor had accepted imprudent advice to build his own political structure, preparatory to his second term in office, but for Anenih\u2019s resilience, the Law professor would have seen his back. Funnily enough, Osunbor\u00a0 was still in court defending his victory in the election in which Oshiomhole had taken the state\u2019s political terrain by storm when he was, seized by the delusion of grandeur, fighting within the PDP to supplant Anenih.
\nSeen as demonstrating political naivet\u00e9 by taking on Anenih, the man who brought him to political limelight, Osunbor, encouraged by a motley crowd of leaders that could not provide him with the necessary political rampart, continued to dig his feet in.\u00a0 Indeed, the negative consequence of his action is a matter of history. He did not only lose to Oshiomhole at the Court of Appeal, he also lost his bid to hijack the PDP structure.
\nSurprisingly, Obaseki has forgotten that intersection in Edo State\u2019s political development so quickly. Does it mean he is not a good student of recent political history of the State? Or, is it that he is scoffing at history?
\nBy engaging in a cold war with Oshiomhole over control of the APC structure, Obaseki is misreading the political terrain of Edo State and repeating history. He is perhaps over-estimating his political worth against an eight-year governorship pedigree by which Oshiomhole had defined the magnitude of his politics of empowerment and accommodation. That quite explains the growing strength of his political structure and his political attractiveness.
\nI had expected Obaseki to emulate that exemplar in his first term, quietly build and empower loyalists now and in his second term for an alternative power base if that is his essential motivation.\u00a0 It has to be strategic and not imprudently hurried. But he decided to approach governance differently.
\nObaseki’s decision to sideline a vast majority of the politicians that Oshiomhole mobilized to work for his governorship election, on the hypocritical pretext that the state\u2019s resources are not to be shared to politicians, was the first major cause of unease in the APC family in Edo.
\nThe argument in some quarters is that Obaseki would not have been governor if Oshiomhole had not anointed him and deployed state\u2019s resources for his election. Since what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, the governor can\u2019t justify his decision to deny those who worked hard for his election the political benefits of their investments. That echoes political prebendalism and mirrors the spoil system in our presidential democracy.
\nThis is exactly what is ailing the APC in Edo State. It is not about claims in certain quarters that Oshiomhole is not giving Obaseki free hands to administer the state. Those close to governance in the state argue that stories doing the round that Oshiomhole has not given Obaseki free hands were patently wrong and unfair. They assert that Oshiomhole has never interfered in the administration of the state since he handed over to his successor.
\nBut conversely, Oshiomhole has been showing more than a passing interest in the administration of the APC in Edo. This is defensible. It is the political machine that he continues to oil as its national chair.\u00a0 Obaseki is not a politician. In the selection of candidates for the 2019 general election, the governor had wanted to install his loyalists as candidates for National Assembly and State House of Assembly elections without recourse to the political sentiments and sensibilities of Oshiomhole.
\nTo Oshiomhole, it was providential that the development happened under his watch as national chair of the APC; otherwise, Obaseki would have deployed the machinery of the state government, in concert with forces at the national secretariat of the APC, to push through his anointed ones as candidates of the party. Oshiomhole would have been pushed to the wall.
\nBut then Oshiomhole could possibly have been compelled to reach a compromise with Obaseki on how to navigate the curves because the concern of the former governor was how to choose popular candidates that could win election. Incidentally, those that were adjudged popular were largely those who had worked in Oshiomhole\u2019s government and therefore referred to as Oshiomhole\u2019s boys.
\nThe perception supra was preposterous when considered within the context that Obaseki himself was Oshiomhole\u2019s boy for all of seven years before he became governor. Becoming his own man and possessing\u00a0all the paraphernalia of office are justifiable bases of hubris that the governor displays in both subtle and proxy attacks against Oshiomhole.
\nObaseki\u2019s perceived naivet\u00e9 is certainly feeding his hubris in ways that threaten his second term bid. It is self-deception on the part of Obaseki and his administration to create the impression that all is well between him and Oshiomhole. They both know that Obaseki has crossed the red line.\u00a0 Oshiomhole has also probably crossed the Rubicon in a well-considered counterpoise. That is, perhaps, the reason the governor is quietly supporting the agitation for Oshiomhole\u2019s removal because he knows it will be an uphill task to secure APC\u2019s 2020 nomination ticket for a second term with Oshiomhole as national chair.
\n\u25aa Ojeifo, an Abuja-based journalist, contributed this piece via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sufuyan Ojeifo I haven\u2019t met the governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, before. My closest to \u201cmeeting\u201d him is seeing him speak on television. I also read stories about him in the print media. Until anointed governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2016 election by his former boss, Adams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5777],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}