A Chieftain of the APC in Edo State, Prince John Mayaki, has accused Governor Godwin Obaseki of revealing his ‘colonial mindset’ with an alleged attempt to wrestle control of the repatriated Benin artefacts from the traditional institution headed by the respected Oba of Benin.
He said the governor plans to achieve this through hastily formed trustee companies manned by “pawns in a suit” who repeat the same justification advanced by the colonialists who stole the prized possessions and refused to give them up, until the world united in condemnation of them.
Mayaki said, “Speaking through his barely-literate surrogates whose incoherent statements are littered with words and phrases they picked up from the media but still don’t understand their application, Governor Godwin Obaseki is justifying his barely-disguised attempt to appropriate the monarch’s artefacts with the same argument offered by the colonialists who stole and kept them for decades.”
“The failure of a leader has arrogated to himself the exclusive knowledge of how best to utilize and commercialize these artefacts that hold symbolic cultural and spiritual meaning for the Benin people, even more than the rightful owner and the custodian of the culture.”
“In other words, similar to the gun-toting Europeans that pillaged the palace and refused to surrender the loot of their plunder with the excuse that the owners from which they stole the prize lack the competence to preserve them, Obaseki has been running around, setting up fronts and positioning pawns in a suit, to corner the traditional institution and appropriate the valuable antiquities.”
“From whence does Obaseki derive the authority to dictate to the owner of an item how he must utilize it? Are these artefacts, some of which hold deep spiritual importance and are reserved for special traditional rites and sacred ceremonies, meant to be displayed on shelves for strangers to gawk at in exchange for a few wands of cash?”
“Has this errant governor completely lost his self-respect and regard for his ancestors that he believes the only value for their sacred spiritual items and heirloom is monetary?”
“Even if that was the case, has the palace communicated its inability to pursue and achieve this goal, thus warranting his intervention? Has the Oba requested help from the state government regarding the preservation and utilization of the artefacts in line with the Benin culture and tradition that guided their usage before the theft?”
“These are the questions Obaseki must answer before he is allowed to corner these items with fronts he has set up and manned with strangers to the Benin culture.”
“Otherwise, we can all safely conclude that this lost man is simply betraying his colonial mindset and strange detachment and loss of regard for the Palace and his ancestors.
“Hence, his outrageous and sacrilegious claim that, with the support of strangers, he is an authority or even a relevant party on the matter of artefacts that predate his uninspiring existence must be challenged by all self-respecting subjects of the great kingdom.”
Mayaki went further to say that Obaseki’s argument holds no water because he is “foolishly challenging an institution that spawned and kept the artefacts safely for centuries before their theft by foreigners with the support of enemies within, an history the governor must be familiar with given the role played by someone he has a direct link to. Perhaps history is repeating itself.”