“Accept my leadership or leave” – Obaseki

By Kassim Afegbua

Political contestation in Nigeria is often a matter of life and death. When a typical Nigerian aspirant wants to secure the ticket of a party, he goes to every length humanly possible to ensure he gets the attention of all the factors and parties that are connected one way or the other, to securing the ticket. He will appear so harmless and meek like a lamb seeking for shelter. Anything you tell him, he swallows without asking the implications or otherwise.

An aspirant in Nigeria and its politics, is deception personified. The level of pretentiousness has become one of the reasons why politicians are hardly trusted. Examples are legion of how disappointed people often become due to failed promises and unfulfilled commitments on the part of the aspirant and by extension, the candidate of political parties. From President Buhari to the lowest position in the land, it has been an unhealthy story of failed and unfulfilled promises. There are usually handy reasons to justify his actions and inactions. Some will tell you they are in charge, others will hardly brook any opposition and will easily tell their onlookers to seek the other exit door if the rubrics of leadership has become unbearable to them.

In Edo State, Governor Obaseki is the tin-god. He tries to invoke the Machiavelian streak in the wrong way. He tries to assimilate the 48 Laws of Power in the most bizarre of terms. Like Josef Stalin, he tries to impose his whims on the people by pronouncing a fatwa kind of political rhetoric, you either “accept me or leave the party, I am going nowhere”. At some point when Josef Stalin could not tolerate voices of dissent in Old Russia, he started chasing the people around and tried to apply his iron fist discipline, but at some point when his health failed him, he saw the vanity of life and its ephemerality.  Hear him in one of his famous quotes”…Iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and contest of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be ‘blind’. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline”. Governor Obaseki’s compelling desire to ram his thoughts down the throat of PDP State Working Committee and the entire power apparachik of the party at the local government exposes his intolerance and intemperate tempers to exploit the traction of transformational leadership. To him, because he is the Governor of the state, every mammals must bow at his altar. And his word should be law and verdict of history.

I hate to psychoanalyse persons because it exposes their other side, if you like, their flip side. In dissecting the Governor Obaseki’s persona, I picked holes in his style, political drudgery, his art of being an ingrate, his alchemy, his display of raw power, his attitude of undercutting his benefactors and a somewhat inordinate appetite to forcefully impose his person on people. Leadership and respect are earned and not decreed by sheer fiat. Respect for people in authority should derive from their ability to understand the various sentiments and idiosyncrasies of those they govern. In the case of Governor Obaseki and the government he runs, it is a sympathetic case that has exposed the character behind his persona. In APC, he displayed similar headlines of trying to be called the leader and seen as such. He threatened those leaders in APC, and at the end of the day, he was shown the exit door contrary to his wish. The PDP became handy for him to shield him from outright shame and disgrace. He had several options opened to him. He would have joined the All Progressives’ Grand Alliance-APGA-, but he knew that would jeopardise his aspiration. He joined the PDP, such a formidable party that has lived up to its ranking in Nigeria’s political rating.

What ought to be a blessing to the PDP, moving from being opposition to a ruling party in the state, has become a curse of unimaginable proportion. From day one, what Governor Obaseki could not enjoy in APC, he is trying to enjoy that with a party that he hurriedly joined to save his face from utter disgrace. A man who cloth you when you were stripped naked in the public glare, deserves some respect and recognition, when you finally wear your full regalia. You don’t need to remind that person the shape and colour of your regalia and status. A little bit of respect and every other thing will fall in place. But those who see power as the ultimate elixir are often blinded by its terminal date. Rather than use power for the ultimate good, power uses them to hurt the ultimate good. It becomes a contest between conscienceless power confronting powerless conscience; the drumbeats of sycophants, rentiers and hallelujah boys become an enabler to goad the leader on the path of perdition. Josef Stalin enjoyed all those drumbeats as he chased every opposition out of Russia for fear that they might upstage his grip on the power rostrum. When his daughter stayed by his sick-bed, Stalin was completely undone. The vanity of all power that he hitherto wielded evaporated into Russia’s angry and frightful society. That is the vanity of life.

Now, what is the crux of the matter in Edo State PDP? Governor Obaseki desirously wants to take full control of the structure that birthed him, which he did not create. He was and still is, an outsider in the PDP power pantheon. He is wondering why it has become impregnable to armtwist the process to suit his desire. He is busy looking afar, pointing accusing fingers at Dan Orbih, the party’s Vice Chairman for South-South, as his nemesis, whereas the solution hovers around Obaseki himself. Rather than cultivate the understanding of Dan Orbih, his campaign manager, he woke up one morning and purported to have suspended him. That cannot be a piece of good news to a man who campaigned vigorously across the 192 wards of Edo State to ensure Governor Obaseki’s re-election. He did not only purportedly suspend Chief Orbih, he also suspended 10 others to create the initial fear, forgetting that the PDP is evidently different from the APC. The constitution of the party had installed new executives across board before Governor Obaseki came on stream. What Obaseki desires is for those statutory positions to be shortchanged to accommodate his co-travellers from the APC. This is near impossible because those executives were elected to run a four-year tenure, hence forcefully removing them will be counter-productive.

In his appointments, Governor Obaseki ensured that 99.9% of his appointees were his followers that came from the PDP. He left the PDP out of his power equation, waiting to use old APC methods to rein in his grip within the party. He courts the support of his school mates; Senator Urhogide and Senator Ordia, to give a semblance of being in charge of the party. He comes up with dubious names each time illegal meetings are conducted; EXPANDED MEETING OF PDP, such extraneous body that is not captured in the Party’s constitution. Rather than engage, Governor Obaseki’s pride is leading him to Golgothar. Rather than exhibit leadership by example, he’s deploying selective amnesia to sustain a crack in the party, to draw the attention of the National body. The lamentations of his Deputy, Phillip Shuaibu, tell a story of utter confusion and indeterminate future. His foot soldiers from APC are still lurking around the power corridors at Osadebe Avenue, but still peeping through the doors to see the inner sanctuary of the party. The old members of the PDP have remained avuncular, preferring to remain stoic and unwavering in their commitment to stay the course, since the Governor has exhausted his strategy to rein them in through a nebulous harmonisation process that is neither here nor there.

With the 2023 presidential primary election in a matter of months, the renewed onslaught is understandable. The Governor is feeling alienated and wants to use his position to dress himself in borrowed robes of being “the leader of the party” without the party. Instead of him to seek conciliation with those he purportedly suspended ab initio, visit them at home and seek for rapprochement, he’s busy exploding hot air over nothing. Leaders must be ready to cultivate through robust means, the friendship, support and understanding of persons who were once his benefactors. Obaseki’ s lamentations will surely continue once he’s unable to connect the dot of constructive engagement. Breathing down the throats of some party leaders and making pronouncements that will further aggravate the situation is akin to postponing the evil day. A well organised party is stronger and bigger than the aspiration of one individual. And PDP, given its trajectory, has a knack for constitutional democracy, than dictatorial exposition. It is what makes it different from other parties, APC inclusive.