By Ebere Levi
“We are warning the suspended National Chairman. If he continues his activities in Edo State, I will show him that I am the Governor of Edo State”
The above quote was Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo state, recently, issuing a stern warning to Adams Oshiohmole, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who is also his predecessor and estranged godfather.
Now, Obaseki’s threat seems to be yielding results. On Wednesday, March the 4th, Oshiomhole was removed as the National Chairman of the APC by an FCT High Court sitting in Jabi. The Court asked him to stop parading himself as the APC boss, having been suspended from the party at the Ward level. More on this later.
Both protagonists have different reasons for their severely strained relationship. Oshiomole claims his only interest in the Obaseki government, for which the governor, according to him, is fighting him, is good governance.
However, the man would in another breath lament the sacking of the only Commissioner he said he was able to nominate into the cabinet.
He also accused the governor of sidelining his (Oshiohmole) loyalists in the Edo APC.
Obaseki’s camp has, however, told this magazine that what the former governor termed “loyalists” are actually illegal revenue collectors unleashed on the state by the immediate past administration.
“Oshiomole is offended by Obaseki’s decision to sanitize revenue collection system in the state. Many of the collectors were engaged by him when he was governor. Obaseki is well educated and cannot, therefore, fold his hands and watch while legitimate government revenue is collected by illegitimate persons who brazenly pocket them.
“The refusal of Obaseki to be Oshiohmole’s lackey by leaving his boys to continue to collect taxes is at the heart of the matter. It’s one of the reasons Oshiohmole wants to pull the governor down”, a senior member of the Edo state government told this magazine.
However, the APC national Chairman has consistently denied this charge. “It is their usual fabrication. The Comrade never maintained illegal tax collectors while he was governor. He ran one of the most transparent governments in Nigeria”, an Oshiohmole supporter in Auchi area of the state told The Source.
A chieftain of Oshiohmole’s faction of the APC in the state who pleaded that his name be concealed “because Obaseki is now Edo’s version of Hitler and goes after perceived enemies” gives further insight into the unsettling fight between the governor and his immediate predecessor.
According to him, Obaseki is not keen on continuity. He accused the governor of deliberate efforts to rubbish Oshiohmole’s legacies by refusing to carry on with projects he inherited from the former governor.
He specifically mentioned the controversial National Hospital, Benin, and asked rhetorically: “Why did Obaseki refuse to complete international Hospital, Benin? Why is he averse to continuity?”
Notably, the hospital, this magazine was told, was started by Oshiohmole, but he could not complete it during his eight years in office. Yet, on the eve of his departure from power, the ex-governor allegedly packaged it as a completed project, and invited President Muhammadu Buhari to commission it.
This magazine sought to know from insiders in the Obaseki government the state of the hospital and a sharp reply came from one of his aides
“When a project has been commissioned, it means that the project is completed and functioning. Ask Oshiohmole why he brought Mr.President to commission the hospital, and, yet is still lamenting that work on it has been stopped”
There are insinuations in some quarters in Benin that Oshiohmole hurriedly got the President to commission the hospital even when it was not yet completed because he wanted to get accolades from Buhari, and then hug newspaper headlines.
However, there is a school of thought that suggests that contractors handling the hospital project may, afterall, be fronting for the APC national chairman, hence his alleged special interest in it. We were not able to confirm this story.
One of the charges against Oshiohmole is that after successfully fighting godfatherism in Edo, he is now scheming to be godfather himself, the sole political godfather in the state, something akin to the larger than life, octopus political influence that Bola Tinubu wields in Lagos politics.
Popular as “Jagaban”, Tinubu, a former Lagos state governor is in firm control of the levers of Lagos politics and has, since 2007, determined who gets elected to political offices in the state.
Though we could not independently confirm this, the magazine was informed that Oshiohmole suddenly started modeling himself after Tinubu when he (Oshiohmole) saw how effortlessly the former Lagos governor stopped the second term bid of the immediate past governor of Lagos State, Akinwumi Ambode.
“Oshomole is mistaking himself for Tinubu. He is deluding himself by thinking Edo is Lagos and that he can control the political affairs of this state. He thinks he can pocket our governor, and then proceed to be the sole determinant of his political future”, a member of the Edo APC faction loyal to Obaseki said.
The ex-Edo governor allegedly started, in the words of the Obaseki loyalist, “his Tinubunization of Edo plot” by scheming to install all members of the Edo state House of Assembly in the 2019 House of Assembly election in the state.
“Fortunately he did not succeed in seizing the House. Had he accomplished his mission of annexing the House, his next mission would have been using his stooges there to remove Governor Obaseki through an illegal impeachment”, he informed the magazine.
Obaseki himself gives fillip to this assertion: “He (Oshiohmole) cancelled the primaries that were initially done by the party at the state level for the 2019 general elections, and did his own because he could not control us at the executive (level). He manipulated the legislature so he could use the House to remove us.
“Can you imagine a national chairman that is creating problems in his own house? Because of that, we had to suspend him and he remains suspended”
Party and government insiders inform that the hitherto muted sour relationship between godfather and godson degenerated into open vitriolic verbal attacks on each other following the APC national chairman’s botched attempt to plant his loyalists in the House.
It was at that juncture that Obaseki, it was gathered, felt enough was enough, hence his decision to openly confront his erstwhile godfather.
Our source in Benin informs that the mood in the Edo state capital and in most parts of the state is staked against Oshiomhole.
The magazine was told that Obaseki’s relentless pummeling of Oshiohmole was indicative of the governor’s grit determination to sustain the fight to a logical end.
He is allegedly setting sight on two objectives: Getting Oshiohmole dethroned as national chairman and eventually expelled from the APC, The Edo state chapter of the party has already suspended him, an action that has been upheld by a High court on Wednesday.
In a ruling on Wednesday, suspending Oshiomhole as the National Chairman of the APC, pending the determination of the substantive suit, the Hon. Justice Danlami Senchi said the leadership of the APC should adhere to its constitution. He said, having been suspended by his Ward, Oshiomhole can no longer be parading himself as the National Chairman of the APC. For good measure, the Judge ruled that he should be denied access to the party headquarters.
The suit was instituted by Olawale Afolabi, who described himself as an APC stakeholder.
Oshiohmole’s enemies within the party, including some members of the National Working Committee, Governors and National Assembly members elected on the party’s platform, are on the same page with the Governor Obaseki as far as seeing the back of the APC National Chairman is concerned.
They insist Oshiohmole has virtually killed APC and that leaving him to continue in office would spell doom for the party in 2023. He is autocratic, and provocatively foul-mouthed, they declare.
The plot to remove the ex- Edo governor as the ruling party’s boss, it was gathered, has reached an advanced stage with the proponents of his sack frantically seeking Buhari’s nod.
“I can authoritatively tell you this, I dont know who will sign nomination forms of governors Obaseki and Akeredolu as governorship candidates of APC, and whoever will emerge as our party’s governorship candidate in Anambra next year, but definitely, Oshiohmole won’t be doing that as the National Chairman of this party. He won’t be there to perform that task.
“He won’t lead the campaign for the re-election of governors Obaseki and Akeredolu. Oshiomole is a gonner”, a source at the national secretariat of the party in Abuja told the magazine.
The source gathered that the tremendous support Governor Obaseki has been getting from anti- Oshiohmole elements within the top echelon of the party accounts for his ceaseless punches on the embattled suspended Chairman. Last week, Oshimhole was roundly booed when he touched down at the Benin airport.
Obaseki was later to lampoon him for venturing into the state without first clearing from him (Obaseki).
The governor had earlier threatened to deal with Oshiohmole if he did not stop fomenting trouble in the state.
Obaseki: “We are warning the suspended National Chairman. If he continues his activities in Edo State, I will show him that I am the Governor of Edo State. While he was governor, he did not tolerate a fraction of the misdemeanour and misbehaviour he is undertaking today. I have declared that if Oshiomhole comes here to Edo to say he wants to disrupt the activities of the state and the party, we will deal with him the way we know how best to do it.
“Comrade Oshiomhole stands suspended from the party. In due course, we will expel him if he does not behave. The party does not belong to him, it belongs to all of us. We are following the wish of our people”
The Source has been told that there is a non- aligned group, prominent chieftains of the APC in Edo, who are plotting against both the interest of Obaseki and Oshiohmole in the Edo 2020 governorship election coming up in August.
This category of APC stalwarts is said to be angry with both the governor and Oshiomhole for polarising the party, and are, therefore, determined to punish the duo by working for the emergence of a PDP governor. “They are assiduously working for the PDP. They want to render both Obaseki and Oshiohmole impotent, politically, by working to ensure that PDP produces the next governor”, a source close to the group told our source.
However, the Oshiomhole camp alleges that the group is actually working for Obaseki, preparing the ground for his eventual defection to the PDP, a charge, an aide to the governor described as balderdash.
“Governor Obaseki is not leaving the APC. Leaving the APC for who and for what? He is in firm control of the Edo APC and will easily get a second term ticket.
“It is laughable to insinuate that someone in Abuja who parades himself as national Chairman of APC will deny the governor the ticket. The person in question does not have the capacity to do so. He is suspended from the party and, will soon, officially cease to occupy the office he is currently laying claim to in the APC national secretariat in Abuja”, he said.
Edo PDP has however, said that APC has failed the state and that the PDP is waiting to return to power.
The party insists there is no force on earth that can save APC from defeat in the coming gubernatorial election in the state. It is, however, silent over the spate of endorsements Obaseki has been receiving from some chieftains of the PDP in Edo, including Senator Daisy Danjuma.
Meanwhile, it has also been gathered that Obaseki will ferociously work to deliver Edo to the PDP as a sitting governor should the unthinkable happen and the APC ticket is given to an Oshiohmole anointee, said to be Pastor Ize Osaze Iyamu, PDP’s governorship candidate in the Edo 2016 governorship election, who, recently, returned to his former party, the APC.
The Magazine has, also, been told of the readiness of some Edo APC members, should Oshiohmole try to impose a candidate on the party, to replicate the same chain of court actions that crippled the party in Rivers and Zamfara states in the run up to the 2019 gubernatorial elections which prompted INEC to declare that the party had no candidates in the two states paving the way for the PDP to ride to power, virtually unchallenged.
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