Obviously, it is presently unwell with Comrade Philip Shaibu, the ‘I don’t care’ deputy governor of Edo State. Either, no one would say it is also well with Mr. Godwin Obaseki, the tempestuous and antagonistic governor, with whom Shaibu is a deputy. Who will vouch that the ‘Torgbites’, an epithet for the rancorous loyalists of the governor and deputy are not more-sickly and dejected by their displacement in a PDP party in which they produced the governor? The binding principle of the governor and his supporters are certain. Birds of same plumages tweet together. A need to do some common good, don’t always unite irrational people than the need to do common evil.
It was the ‘Torgbites’, an Edo backyard political lingo suggesting; “It Must Be Complete’, that was on duty during a recent ‘hot’ afternoon, as the group instantly applauded Shaibu and urged him on, when he delivered an equally ‘hot’ ‘speech to his boss. This time around, it wasn’t ‘complete’ for the ‘Torgbites’, as their shepherd, the deputy governor, had a melancholic message to remind the governor about. Apparently, this made Mr. Shaibu to weep aloud.
Humbled, was the same man, who with the slightest provocation, like in his intoxicating days of juvenile students’ activism, would roll up his sleeves in readiness to do a street fight. Shaibu and the governor are Siamese, an inseparable identical twin, who had eaten the heart of a buffalo. Breaking the bones of political opponents in a free for all is their stock in trade. In mechanical actions, they would turn every bush into snake-infested so long it justifies their alibi to fell political enemies. Real or imagined!
And the ‘Wake and See’ governor, the beginning and end of the Heartbeat state, did not fail in usual deployment of the sledge hammer of incumbency on Chief Dan Orbih and his ‘stubborn’ retinues of the Edo PDP. They must be punished for daring to deny them a stranglehold of the party, in which they barely sow. To the two dudes, there is nothing wrong with any arsenal of war, so long it goes in the name of buccaneer politicking, which the duo had over escalated to a state of art in Edo.
On this very day in question, the expectation of the governor and his deputy, aped on by their loyalist mob was stillborn. To them, the ravaging red ants will always scare or chase away the rightful owners, from harvesting their kola nut tree. But, here was a Nemesis in Chief Orbih, PDP’s national vice-president of South-South, who Obaseki and Philip now seek his political downfall, even though Orbih was the same (then as state chairman of the party), who paved the way, under PDP, for the return of both men to governorship power. Also sought after is the head of Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama, a House of Reps member, who relinquished his governorship contest for Obaseki to emerge. Of course, Orbih, Ogbeide-Ihama and others, backed by the battle tested Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, who similarly assisted Obaseki and Shaibu, are now a doomsday for both governor and his deputy.
Having failed to cow Orbih and his leadership of the state’s ‘old PDP faction’, Shaibu, in a twist of a retributive fate, is the one now weeping aloud. Alas, he had bemoaned to the governor that after abandoning the state chapter of the All Progressives Party (APC), for him to be reelected under PDP, he and his supporters, still haven’t find their feet therein, although he is a governor elected under the same platform. Shaibu’s purpose to goad Governor Obaseki to rash actions by blandishing the battle axe, did not pay off yielded, but got a backlash. For Governor Obaseki’s issuance of a fatwa to Orbih and his men to quit the party for himself and his voyagers from APC, was equally resisted by the ‘old PDP’. “Keep your governorship positions, while we keep our party”, the governor was countered. .
It was in the same aggressiveness Obaseki and Shaibu brought about highhandedness and the internal wrangling in their former APC party, which led to their expulsion from the party, and prolonged political rivalries, open skirmishes and bloodletting.
But, outright arbitration and truthfulness tellingly plays out in amicable resolution of crisis within political parties, where the reign of peace is commonsensical. However, in this realm, the national executive of PDP, led by its national chairman, Dr. Iyochia Ayu, BOT chairman, Senator Walid Jibril and others, recently had an unproductive parley in Benin City, the state capital.
Instead of cashing in on the ample opportunity, it became an avenue for indecent sloganeering of Chief Orbih and Governor Wike. The boycott of Orbih and his faction from the event, leaving mainly the Obaseki’s loyalists in attendance, may have been criticized by some pundits. But chances are that the presence of the two factions in the rally would have led to a bloody clash. The resulted clash would have been a mother-of-all to the ones between ‘Torgbas’ and the ‘Torkpas’, the two feuding mobs of the governor and the APC, respectively.
Remarkably, Senator Roland Stephen Owie, gives realistic insights as to who to blame in the squabbles. Owie, an Octogenarian, who was Chief Whip to the Senate and a founding father of the same PDP, while proffering amicable solutions, blamed Governor Obaseki for fickle-handling the self-inflicted imbroglios in the party. He absolved Chief Orbih and associates of any blame. The veteran politician, who hailed from the same Isi Ward of Uhunmwode local government area of the state as the governor, asserted it was impossible and unconstitutional for the governor to insist on ‘harmonization’, an intermix of the governor’s loyalists, who defected from APC), with the already constituted executives of Edo PDP,
Interestingly, both governor and deputy have clandestine succession plan, where Governor Obaseki, after finishing his ongoing eight years of double stints, added to Shaibu’s eight years stay as deputy, would have to return as governor for another eight successive years, through the year 2024 election. And Mr. Shaibu, foreseeing a hidden obstacle in Chief Orbih, a political masterstroke from the same Edo North Senatorial District as himself, now pushes the governor to join him in ruining Orbih’s chances by knocking him out of the PDP. The underlying tone is that the deputy governor’s camp believes that Orbih has the same gubernatorial ambition, and his looming silhouette within the PDP family, had to be cut short. Otherwise, if allowed to be, could render Shaibu his mismatch, in the contest.
The governor and Shaibu are said to be single-minded in conceited and ruthless political maneuvers. They will always fight their benefactors. For instance, both ascended political power and relevance, on the platter of gold. Obaseki was a nondescript political neophyte, who as a Man Friday rode on the back of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole’s to be a governor. An unsuspecting Oshiomhole had preferred Shaibu above more competent aspirants, to be elected a lawmaker representing Etsako West II constituency in the Edo House of Assembly, added to his guided meteoric rise as its Majority Leader. Oshiomhole subsequently assisted him to a House of Reps position, which Shaibu didn’t complete, before Oshiomhole again catapulted him as Obaseki’s deputy. And before Oshiomhole could say Kukuruku, another name for the duo’s enlarged nativity, Shaibu had connived with Obaseki, to betray their very benefactor.
Good or bad, there is always a price-tag to every human action. In a bizarre manner unknown in Edo history the Obaseki’s incumbency, instead of evolving peace and progress, will step on sored toes and ruined its institutions, which he swore to protect. After the Oshiomhole’s spat came more of the governor’s witch hunt of selected Edo indigenes.
The governor had fruitlessly attempted “a neck-breaking head load of stone”, when he moved to commandeer the looted and returned artifacts, thus drawing the wrath of the revered Oba of Benin and the Edo traditional institutions. Now the two maximum rulers of Edo State have apparently climbed the tree to its leaves.
The nibbling he-goat would always go for the yam tubers. But, this writer could be justified about his insinuation in a previous article that more attempted bites of the Chief Orbih’s and Governor’s yam would finally purge and deter the governor and his deputy.
