…Months After Claiming Re-election, Fails To Organize Govt
Governor Godwin Obaseki’s desperate and financed alliance with the PDP has compounded his atypical slow and irresponsible pace of appointments. Shackled by the numerous promises he made to different factions of power to get re-elected, his staffing problem has grown acute as he struggles to draw up a ‘sharing formula’ acceptable to all, leaving his administration confused, directionless, and a battleground of feuding loyalists fighting for recognition.
While election was conducted far back in September last year, and a new term of four years was inaugurated in November, Obaseki has left several key positions vacant, including those that do not require approvals from other arms of government such as a Chief of Staff and Media adviser. As a result, months into an administration meant to provide relief to the people of Edo State, the Governor is yet to form any meaningful team let alone unite human and material resources behind a vision for the state.
Critics have questioned whether the government has a vision for the state at all. Crucially, in the 2020 electioneering campaign, Governor Godwin Obaseki notably bucked an established trend of incumbents when he failed to produce a manifesto document that coherently highlights his achievements if any, alongside a plan to build on them if handed another term. He only hurriedly cobbled together a copy-cat ‘MAGA’ plan after suffering scathing criticism from his major opponent whose original SIMPLE AGENDA became the talk of town for its availability and well-grounded policy proposals.
To his enduring shame, when Obaseki made a show of launching the MAGA plan in a live broadcast across social media, he became the butt of jokes and memes as he stuttered and projected the image of a confused man called to defend an alien document he neither authored nor was part of its development.
The joke has now manifested into full-blown tragedy as Edo State slips further into poverty and insecurity while the government cannot get its act together for service delivery because the man elected to head it has failed to provide leadership and organization.
Obaseki’s appointment woes are of many folds. On one end, he has discovered the impossible task of satisfying the ravenous appetite of the PDP, a party re-branded by one of its own leaders as a group of ‘tax-collectors’. According to those well-briefed on the matter, in addition to the hefty sum the Governor allegedly purchased the PDP ticket with, he also made broad promises of important government positions to leaders of the party who helped him broker the controversial deal.
Those promises, thoughtlessly made in his desperate hour of political need and vulnerability, has now come to haunt him as he struggles to balance satisfying the PDP and rewarding his own personal loyalists who are not yielding any ground.
No sooner than he was re-elected before Obaseki announced himself the ‘leader’ of the PDP in an ill-advised power grab move. Desperate to renege on his promises and dethrone the PDP chiefs, he tried to hijack the party’s structure by installing his disgraced puppet, Anselm Ojezua, as Edo PDP Chairman. The move, without any clear success, has destroyed trust and intensified internal fissures.
His failure to assume full control of the PDP and the developing cracks in the political alliance (glued by money) that ushered him into office and could imperil his second term have frustrated and hamstrung the governor. He doesn’t know how to proceed without detonating a fatal political landmine, and his refusal to act only fuels the free-for-all fight in his camp as different factions duel to outmaneuver themselves.
Amid the political chicanery, the matters of governance have once again been relegated to the background. Edo State is once again without any leadership; Osadebey Avenue has once again been reduced to a political theater of selfish wars. Obaseki swells his record of disappointment and failure.