SHAIBU’S GALLANT GAMBLE (2)

Josef Omorotionmwan writes that Governors rarely allow their deputies to succeed them

Those Kukuruku youths are wonderful. They recently displayed some of the attributes inculcated in them from very early in life. They have learnt that if a good son ran into a situation where people were insulting his mother, he should first fight for his mother before demanding to know the cause of the quarrel. 

If it turned out that his mother was at fault initially, he could begin to apologize. Meanwhile, he had fought the good fight on behalf of his mother. 

In the elegant phraseology of William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), “Sweet are the uses of adversity. …” How else would anybody have known that for some time now, these Youths of Excellence have been compiling a dozier on Hon. Philip Shaibu (alias Homeboy) to the extent that they pulled a video of where he was dancing when their father, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was fired as the National Chairman of the All-Progressives Congress, APC?

So soon, Shaibu has fallen out of favour with the Obaseki gang; and he wants to return home. For the Youths of Excellence, Shaibu had murdered sleep and there was no way he would be allowed even to come and eat his vomit. In the protest, they pulled out all the placards they had prepared all these years and threatened to march on Abuja, if it became necessary to do so.

As far as the youths are concerned, loyalty to Oshiomhole must be total, unflinching and unalloyed. This type of loyalty is earned over time.

THE FIGHTS I HAVE SEEN. The struggles in which Shaibu is currently entangled are not new. We see them every day. What could be different in them would be the limits to which you take them as well as the methods one chooses to adopt. For want of adequate space, we shall attempt here to walk the recent cases backwards. As it is today with Obaseki and Shaibu, so it was yesterday with Oshiomhole and Odubu, but as mentioned earlier, the methods were different. Some were more matured than others. While some were open and transparent, others operated under the candle light. 

The Oshiomhole years were very turbulent. The ink on the Oshiomhole/Odubu inauguration papers had hardly dried before rumour mongers – some very strong forces within the APC – went to town with the speculation that Odubu was not going to come back with Oshiomhole in the second tenure. The issue loomed heavier by the day and at a point, it was beginning to threaten to tear the Oshiomhole Administration asunder. 

Give one thing to Oshiomhole – he consulted widely and listened to the voice of reason. 

On that fateful Friday, Oshiomhole called me to say we must meet in his office at 8:00pm that day.

Our meeting started at 8:00pm and lasted till the wee hours of the following day, with only one agendum for the meeting – the issue of the Deputy Governor. 

Throughout the deliberations, Oshiomhole maintained with monotonous regularity that no one ever sells his fowl simply because it hatches too much. Similarly, it would be a height of full hardiness for the Governor to change a performing Deputy midstream. As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. So, Odubu stays with me. 

It is instructive that Oshiomhole remained stoically silent on the succession issue.

That was where my work started. I was now to broker the peace that had been totally shattered before now. 

I performed the assignment creditably and we clinked all the champagne glasses. Peace returned to APC albeit temporarily. 

Things soon fell apart. As soon as the nomination bell rang for Oshiomhole’s successor, Odubu was the first to declare interest. This writer was the one Odubu chose to drive the publicity for his campaigns.

Oshiomhole had thrown his weight behind Obaseki. The fight was ferocious. As it was with Obaseki and Shaibu, so it was with Oshiomhole and Odubu. There was a difference. 

The moment Shaibu knew Obaseki was not supporting him, he began to pour all invectives on Obaseki but as for Odubu, he remained loyal to Oshiomhole even at the edge of doom. 

Odubu soon saw me as a hardliner, which I am not. As the Director of Publicity for his campaign, I was also supposed to point to the direction of his speeches.

The Oshiomhole side kept attacking us ferociously, but Odubu would not allow us respond to them commensurately. Occasionally, Odubu would request Hon. Osagie and one other to give him a draft speech. I would look at their draft; and I would get them to agree with me that we should add a few words that would portray our side as not all women. 

Before presentation, Odubu would cleverly remove all the gravitas that I included in the speech.

Occasionally, I confronted him, but he maintained he would not say anything bad about Oshiomhole. 

I told him that Oshiomhole was a mutual friend to all of us; and that I, too, would not want to say anything bad about him.

I kept reminding him that meanwhile, the Oshiomhole side was bashing us. There is a level to which we can condescend. We cannot continue to fly like a butterfly without sometimes stinging like a bee.

In which ever direction we look, the truth remains that Governors are unwilling to have their deputies succeed them. Loyalty is also at issue here. They have a belief that freshers would be more loyal than the incumbent. All the same, Odubu opted for passive resistance. 

He fought as if there was tomorrow and today, he remains the best friend of his boss. On the other hand, Homeboy opted for total confrontation and came out with a bloody nose.

The Kukuruku Youths of Excellence agree with Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904 – 1996), “It is a capital error in politics to trust a reconciled enemy”. But Homeboy’s case is different.

An enemy’s enemy is a friend. Homeboy is now poised for the last laugh. He watches keenly as Obaseki embarks on the path of self-destruct. By the time Homeboy and his people as well as the Legacy PDP in Edo State empty themselves into APC that, on its own, is already coasting home to victory, the Common enemy will realize that what is left is Obaseki’s Nunc Dimittis! At the Requiem, there will be no fake Governor around to provide a fake shared immunity for any Godfather to hang on to!

Besides, Chief Friday Ibadin, the strongman of Esan politics has just emptied a critical segment of the LP population into the mix.

In Uhumwonde, there is a tsunami of sorts. Chief Hon. Charles Idahosa, the undisputed heavyweight champion of Uhumnwonde (nay Edo) politics, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the PDP, has just dumped the PDP, and he is returning to his natural habitat, the APC with his massive crowd of followers. Who is left?

The push has just started.  As the old negro spirituals would say, “you aint seen nothing yet”. 

In all this, there is no room for surprises. Obaseki’s 2020 Semon on Mount Aso Rock against Godfatherism was perhaps a self-fulfilling prophesy: “…. If ever I become a Godfather, I should be dealt with accordingly because it is dangerous. It is dangerous to the concept of democracy”.

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada