Category: Politics

The crisis in the PDP cannot be ignored. With a great chance of winning the general elections for the Governor’s seat the PDP certainly must get it right this time around.

The fight between Bar. Sado and Chief Dan Orbih led to the emergence of Late Bar. Ikhabafe, it was the only way to bring peace to the party as an agreement could not be reached between the two. When Bar. Ikhabafe passed on Chief Dan Orbih took over his seat as PDP Edo State Chairman in 2009 and was affirmed again in 2011 for a second term.

The issue is not if Chief Dan Orbih is qualified to contest for the seat for a third time, but if returning him back to the esteem position is worth it for the party. Keeping in mind that he has spent at least six years in office it is Chief Dan Orbih’s performance that is under review and although the party constitution agrees to up to two terms “63(1) TENURE OF OFFICE OF PARTY OFFICERS – All National, Zonal, State, Local Government Area and Ward Officers of the Party shall hold office for a term of four years and shall be eligible for re-election for another term and no more.” The same does not state that a chairman or any elected officer must return for a second term. The members of the PDP have a right to vote out any officer they believe has not performed up to their expectations and vote in someone else.

In an article published on social media by Mr. Chris Nehikhare it stated that Chief Dan Orbih did not play ethnic politics. Members of the PDP in Edo North disagree.

According to the Party’s zoning policies when positions are zoned to a particular constituency if for any reason that position is vacated before the end of its term, that a person from the same zone should occupy the position. The position of Organizing secretary was zoned to Owan West, however when the position was vacated before its term ended the position was never filled by anyone from the same zone, what Chief Dan Orbih did was create a position that did not exist in the Constitution called “welfare officer” and a close female friend of his from Etsakor occupied that position. In 2014 when the position of Senatorial chairman zoned to Owan West was vacated before its term ended no one from the same zone occupied this position rather Chief Dan Orbih gave the position to his friend Hon. Tenebe also from Etsakor leaving Owan West without a voice in the Exco.

In fact by the time Chief Dan Orbih was done, the office of the State Chairman, the senatorial chairman, the senatorial Woman leader and the organizing secretary aka welfare officer all came from the Etsakor area. The zoning policies of the PDP was borne out of the interest of fairness, something which Chief Dan Orbih has greatly violated.

With everything that has gone wrong in the party one cannot ignore the involvement of a major player, the former Chairman, Chief Dan Orbih pending a new congress to elect officials for the party.

Since Chief Dan Orbih was made chairman, in fact imposed on the party, the party has been on a steady losing streak. Now Chris Nehikhare claimed in his write up that he has been an opposition to the ACN/APC and that he has been a nightmare to Governor Oshiomhole. No one can deny that he (Orbih) has not held a lot of press conferences, made a lot of videos and shouted about the ills going on in Edo State or done well as the publicity secretary, but all the noise has still not earned us a win. Another argument may be that we got seats in the last election, but everyone knows that that was due to then President Goodluck Jonathan  and when he lost his election we lost all the House of Assembly seats and one house of representative position in the Orhionmwon/Uhunmwonde Constituency also in Edo South, We lost two seats only in Edo Central due to their doggedness, We lost all house of representative seats in Edo North, the senate seat in Edo North and five out of six seats in the House of Assembly election, the same Edo North District which Chief Dan Orbih comes from.

Chief Dan Orbih has never voted in any election, we question if he has a voters card. His vote has never been counted among winning or losing votes. Every election he claims that the youths have barricaded him in his  home at Ogbonna, when we sent scouts to verify this information we found Chief Dan Orbih drinking champagne and eating bush meat, while the rest of us fought in our units for the party to win. Chief Dan Orbih has never won his unit, his ward, or his LGA; he has never been on ground to make sure that his party wins. Money sent for the party to work is kept by this man who could care less if we won or lost.

A State Chairman who cannot win his unit, how is he expected to win the state. The majority of the people of Edo North do not believe in the ability of Chief Orbih to win this next election, he has no integrity or credibility, a sell out and a noise maker. As the saying goes “empty vessels make much noise”, this is Chief Dan Orbih, a man who has nothing to offer to the PDP or its members.

Chief Dan Orbih operated as a one man team despite his executives. He was the woman leader, treasurer, financial secretary, auditor, the organizing secretary aided by the welfare officer and most especially the Publicity secretary, many of us would without hesitation vote him into that position.

He directly violated the party’s policies and constitution by depositing party money into his personal account irrespective of the fact the Party has an official account. He never accounted for the party’s money. As we also heard recently that 500 million of the Dasuki money was deposited into his personal account for the elections last year, yet we could hardly win a seat in his District.

To cover up his tracks last week he called a meeting of some LGA chairmen where he wanted them to say that he had given them some of the Dasuki money, most of them realizing the implication of doing so refused to participate. We will be finished if prior to the elections the chairman of our dear party is picked up by the EFCC. Chief Dan Orbih is unaccountable to the members of the PDP and lacks transparency, he is arrogant, disrespectful, and abusive to party members.

As a party chairman irrespective of his opinion regarding the aspirants of the party, it was his duty to remain objective. He should never have taken it upon himself to promote only one aspirant which he has done in grave error. Although, all of this began before his term expired in September 2015 and continued after he illegally made himself the caretaker committee also in violation of the party’s constitution.

Our message to the Edo people cannot be violence one which is promoted by Orbih’s aspirant. We need a candidate that actually has ideas on how to administer a state and is able to deal with the economic crisis, one that is credible and without baggage, not one that does have baggage, could not win his constituency for the House of Representative election, lost the battle of wits for the deputy seat in his previous party, chanting cult songs at rallies and preparing the state for thugs, miscreants and hoodlums to take over.

That aside, having primaries allows for the people to make the right choice, and determine who is the best person to field. We cannot develop a strategy based on violence either. To win this the Edo people have demanded for one who has the well withal. To field a person who has so much baggage and who has also admitted to being a failure since a government he was part of failed woefully would be a disaster. This is not war it is an election and we need to do it right.

It is a flawed thought to believe that only one person can do a job. It is also flawed to fail to try something new because of fear.

We should be wise in our decision, doing the same thing can definitely not bring a different result. A man who has never won his unit can certainly never win a state.

Our slogan is clear, when we say Power to the people we have a clear understanding that the power lies in the people through their vote and not one man.

May God be our guide

By Okharedia Ihimekpen

When William Shakespears copied the Roman historian who reported Caesar’s last words in Greek ‘Kai Su, teknan?’  in his play, ‘Julius Caesar’, little did the celebrated playwright known that it will typify events in Edo State centuries later but it did happen.

Caesar entered the Senate and all Senators stood to show respect, but some moved behind his chair and others approached as if to greet him. One pulled his robe to show the beginning of the attack, and then, the circle of Senators tightened around Caesar and stabbing him.

When Caesar saw Brutus stabbing him in the groin, he was found to have been stabbed 23 times. Such was the frenzy of the attack, started by Casca that some of the Senators were themselves wounded.

That captured the story of Edo State Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, governor of Edo State as he dumped the organized labour and Edo people to be main apostle of the removal of fuel subsidy in 2011 during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

The organised labour had enumerated a litany of conditions that must precede the removal of fuel subsidy. This includes the revamping of our dilapidated refineries, tackling corruption in the sector and building of new ones which experts said if in place will reduce the refining cost to N40 per liter.

The government thought otherwise, that the wise thing to do was to remove the subsidy and use the money to revamp the economy in other to rescue the nation from the grasp of economic vampires. Oshiomhole like most of his colleagues then agreed, they gave the president the assurance that they will go to their states and educate their people of the need to support the removal of fuel subsidy.

Getting to Edo State, Oshiomhole hosted the Organised Labour and protesters on the first day of the strike, this to assure them of his total support of their protest. This gave the hoodlums the impetus to go hay wire to inflict mayhem and destruction on innocent people and properties belonging to the Peoples Democratic Party in the State.

Ironically when the issues got to its front burner, in the negotiations between the Organised Labour, the National Assembly and the Executive, the same Oshiomhole joined forces with the executive, abandoned the labour and the masses, to press for the petrol subsidy removal. Could that have been double standard? No, I do not think so, as the leopard hardly change it’s colours.

In fairness to Oshiomhole, he in an Executive Position also needed the money that would accrue from the subsidy. He need the money to continue to fight Federal agencies in his state, especially of who should reconstruct the Federal roads at the expense of state roads, education, health, unemployment and of course to pursue elections.

In 1994 during the struggle for the actualization of June 12 in the repressive regime of Gen. Sani Abacha, a struggle that sent many Nigerians and Labour leaders to death, Oshiomhole was the Secretary General, of the vibrant Textile Workers Union. He and other labour leaders, of Ovie Kokori stood to sing, that “on June 12 they stood”. As soon as the draconian Abacha regime sent Kokori and other Nigerians to jail, Oshiomhole, like Nicodemus sneaked into Abacha’s government and became the junta nomination to the Constitutional Conference to formulate laws against the interest of Nigerians. The organised Labour lampooned and officially boycotted the conference. Oshiomhole was on his own.

This has being Oshiomhole’s appointment with history. The irony of his situation is compelling. He represents the hurried and desperate gamble of a ruling class that has exhausted all its permutations. Oshiomhole’s strength lies in his reputation as a mobilizer and agitator. Ironically, his strength is also his weakness. He may be led to misconstruing his political mission as that of a stop gap between two progressive eras. Government then becomes a perpetual hostage of the manipulators of our differences.

Between 1999 and 2007 when Oshiomhole was president of the Nigerian Labour Congress, he led Nigerians out for strike six times and six times Nigerians got the fuel prize increased from N11 per liter to N65 per liter, and each time he negotiated  with the government he negotiated the people out, for a bargain.

A friend of mine once asked why governor Oshiomhole did not come earlier. I had told him that, in the societal anguish and anger of the post Igbinedion era, a short sized comrade governor, would have been a contradiction in historical terms. That, Oserheimen Osunbor with his meek unsmiling visage, his lean and rather anxious futures, captured the mood of that moment. The rulings class together with its apparatus especially a judiciary that was utterly contemptible in its cringing buffoonery, compromise with controversial judicial pronouncement and disgraced itself.

That Oshiomhole betrayed its mission and in so doing compounded the image problems of a ruling class, is a fact too well known to delay us here. And in the absence of genuine revolutionary circumstances, this betrayal paved the way for a different kind of political patronage; a shortish figure; a double faced comrade, corrupt and model day political tyrant. The irony of his situation is compelling. He now represents the hurried and desperate gamble of a ruling class that has exhausted all its permutations. Yet the integrity, dignity and the image of the Comrade Governor had steadily devalued and eroded since Oshiomhole” emergence as Edo State Governor.

One may therefore ask what has happened to the sweet romance between the governor and his deputy. Today Oshiomhole is at war with his deputy, his commissioners, market women his party APC and with Edo people over his plan to impose Godwin Obaseki as  Governor. He feels he has destroyed all the structures he used to fight godfatherism in the system to become a governor in 2008.

Like in the “Animal farm” he is now the defector Godfather. This writer had always reminded him that, “tyrants that flex the sward of Brutus in the Capital always meet the ghost of Caesar in the Philippine.”

For Seven months now, President Mohamadu Buhari came to power Oshiomhole had virtually being in Abuja at the expense of his State functions dabbling on national issues he is poorly educated about. From the NNPC allegedly missing fund, to the 2^nd Niger Bridge and now to the security votes which is currently under probe. Since Nigerian’s independence, that is the first republic I have never heard of security votes of a governor, or a president probed, what is making it more amazing, is when people like Oshiomhole are seeking roles in the saga, when in actual fact he is only seeking cover for the corruption mess that is trailing all the economic sectors in his debt ridden Edo State.

Unless President Buhari knows something the rest of us do not know about Oshiomhole, the government must distance itself from the Comrade Governor now and fast.