Governor Obaseki of Edo State has a new favorite pastime, and it is undermining the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and disparaging the party he leads, the All Progressives Congress.
His latest salve came in form of a joint statement issued by Governors elected on the platform of the PDP in which, among other strong condemnations, President Buhari was accused of “leadership incompetence and mismanagement of the party’s affairs.”
The statement was the product of a meeting in Makurdi where PDP Governors, displaying their trademark lack of self-awareness, flew in jets to commission a 3km road and decry the ‘waste’ of the country’s resources.
Before the meeting and the joint statement, Governor Obaseki had in a meeting with a group in Benin City made a questionable claim that the President caused the Central Bank of Nigeria to “print money for sharing.” This irresponsible claim has already been debunked by top officials at the relevant ministries, including Finance, who chose anonymity for understandable reasons.
When all of these are considered alongside the Governor’s poor management and needless adversarial position to the Federal Government over the matter of the hosting of the National Sports Festival in Edo State, one would not be wrong to conclude that Mr. Godwin Obaseki thinks very low of the President and the APC, and is quite eager to let this fact known to the world.
It is a fascinating turn for a man who, months ago, ahead of the 2020 Edo Governorship election, devoted material and immaterial resources into incessant trips to Abuja where he expended all the political sway he could muster into frolicking with the President, even if from a distant position.
He branded himself the “adopted son of the President” and went to great length to praise his policies, particularly management of the economy against the backdrop of general global decline and the unraveling of Nigeria’s primary revenue source. His army of social media propagandists, many of whom have since found themselves out of jobs, saturated the electronic media with images of the Governor hanging out with his ‘father’, as they referred to President Muhammadu Buhari.
The policies have not changed. The negative global march of the economy, accelerated by the devastating and crippling pandemic, remains the dominant trend. Yet Obaseki has made a complete 180-turn, now taking the liberty to insult and denigrate the same President and his party at will.
Those unfamiliar with his antics and traits as a sniveling political weasel without integrity may be surprised. But definitely not anyone who has been paying attention to this man since he pulled the first great betrayal of throwing the platform that made his emergence in 2016 possible under the bus in service of selfish and personal motives.
To be fair, Obaseki’s inelegant and dour speech may have touched on important points of expanding the country’s revenue base through diversification. But he was motivated by malice and malice is blinding. That is why in the incoherent rant laced with lies and irresponsible sensationalism, he failed to acknowledge that the Buhari-administration, grappling with only a fraction of the revenue available to the previous PDP government, has recorded far greater success in improving Nigeria’s infrastructure, connecting economic regions and corridors, and empowering the most vulnerable. These are steps without which any diversification effort would fail.
Obaseki took umbrage at the Federal Government’s borrowing. But at least the entire country knows how much is owed, the repayment plan and the purpose for which the loans were obtained. Under his own watch, Edo State has climbed to the top of states with the highest foreign debt burden. Yet teachers are unpaid, schools are indefinitely shut, roads are cratering, and youths have become restive owing to lack of jobs. No one knows to whom the state is owing and how the loans would be repaid. The branch of government charged with the constitutional duty of bringing these facts to light has been destroyed and rendered impotent by Governor Obaseki. He barred elected members with thugs, brought down the chamber where they freely assembled and set loose on the state an army of hired goons to enforce tyrannical submission.
Whereas the President Buhari Federal Government has invested in social investment programs with well-defined goals to bring more people out of poverty, Obaseki has invested in thuggery, the result of which has manifested in sprawling killings and violent clashes across the state.
The PDP statement, which Obaseki signed, also lamented the purported bullying of the opposition by President Buhari. Minus the fact that none of the PDP Governors would have been elected or won re-election if President Buhari practiced the PDP’s ‘do or die’ approach that nearly made democracy a forgotten ideal in our nation, in Edo State where Obaseki is Governor, the homes of oppositional leaders are routinely and randomly demolished, their businesses targeted by state agencies, and their very existence constantly threatened by hired goons.
He mocks the APC for not conducting a national congress to elect executives. Whereas, since his own re-election in September, he has not been able to form a cabinet. The state has been on autopilot as poverty and insecurity ravage communities.
Obaseki lacks the credentials to insult President Buhari the way he has so freely done. As Governor, he has broken Edo State’s economy and burdened scarce revenue with an astounding debt toll; he has contributed to the unrest in the South-South axis with his engagement of armed non-state actors who unleashed terror during the election; he has displayed an unfortunate intolerance for the multiplicity of voices that our democratic constitution guarantees.
Obaseki is a failure and a hypocrite. But he persists in this hypocrisy because it has served him well. He wouldn’t have won re-election without it. It was through this hypocrisy and well-constructed smokescreen as the ‘harmless victim’ and ‘eager ally’ that he managed to obtain the reticence and tacit support of some leading figures of the APC who really should have put an end to the charade in the September 2020 election. They got sold on his fake posturing and lies.
Now that he has come swinging at them, the party and the President, perhaps the eye-opener that they sought has finally arrived. Perhaps what has been long known and said of this character as a mischievous and dishonest individual without scruples of any kind would be revealed to them. And finally, maybe this will now force them to abandon the fruitless quest of bringing this modern-day Judas and agent of confusion back into their midst, and instead commit themselves to the far rewarding task of legitimately reclaiming the state under the care and management of a true and tested party member.