PDP Crisis: Why Edo PDP harmonization failed 

By Osagie Efe

I propose to address this issue from both the moral and legal perspectives. However, I need to be objective and committed to equitability.

The reason why Obaseki left APC is not new to us, so I am not revealing any new or classified story. He was shown the way out for attitudes that were alien to any political party, even the Taliban would be repulsed by his actions. He blackmailed the leaders of the party using propaganda of anti-corruption, just like Buhari did in 2015. And he was able to arouse the unsuspecting populace who knew nothing about his shenanigans. So he left and was given shelter in PDP, their greatest undoing in the history of politics. I know Thomas Sankara was revolting in his grave then as he was also betrayed. So when he started whipping up the same type of sentiments in PDP, to us in the media, it was no historical accident. That attitude of betrayal is an infectious carbuncle in him that can be traced through DNA to a causative end from his lineage. We all know the story.

After winning the 2020 election with his APC deputy governor, Godwin Obaseki locked up the channels of communication between him and the legacy PDP members in a bid to obscure and collapse his benefactors there. He no longer picked their calls and went into different degrees of flipancies, blackmails of their leaders and advanced stories that graduated into an agenda that was yet unclear as at that time.

Chief Dan Orbih, a seasoned veteran politician went back to his drawing board to study the lore of this betrayal, the evoked revulsion of the stories Obaseki was peddling, and how they were meant to deeply undermine the gentleman agreement of government sharing between the legacy PDP and the APC elements. The atmosphere was charged and intense but Chief Dan Orbih was mute because the euphoria of victory was still in the air. Few knew what was happening within.

Obaseki even came to Chief Dan Orbih’s birthday party to dance and promised the setting of his cabinet immediately after unilaterally appointing the SSG as at that time. Chief Dan Orbih was not deceived at all because salutation or even disco dance is not an expression of love.

Afterwards, Obaseki exposed his fangs; he made other two appointments still without consultations or reserving any for the legacy PDP. Meanwhile, he was all this time asking for ‘harmonization’ of the excos in the party at all levels. Well, the people were genuinely ready for it, including Chief Dan Orbih.  However, there was a caveat: For those who will be removed from the excos, they will need ready made letters of appointments into the government. It was a master-stroke negotiation by Chief Dan Orbih for his huge followers in the party so that he won’t be accused further for not negotiating properly, as most of the ‘Abuja Politicians’, a name given to the few PDP relics who brought Obaseki to PDP are now called, Tom Ikimi being one of them. Tom Ikimi is ready for Obaseki to annihilate PDP because of his avowed hatred for Chief Dan Orbih.

This demand for letter of appointments for the PDP Excos by Chief Dan Orbih infuriated Obaseki to no small measure. He called for a nurturnal meeting and asked for the outright dissolution of the party excos from the state to the ward levels, an endeavour the state party chairman, Hon. Dr. Anthony Aziegbemi found not only repulsive, but stupid. After the meeting, the state chairman wrote the national chairman of the party accusing Obaseki of series of betrayals, and lambasting him. The letter was filled with resistance and the Edo temper since the request by the governor was seen by him as one to undermine the fabric of goodness he was offered while in the rain and sun.

Still within the same moral contested positions, Obaseki went on to appoint 11 commissioners and two senior assistants with no single consideration for the legacy PDP members, yet was all the time asking for harmonization in the exco.

With this, a confrontation beyond rhetorics, under the leadership of Chief Dan Orbih ensured. He is in control of the old legacy PDP members all over the state, 90% or more vowed not to relinquish their positions to Obaseki and his APC members within their folds for whatever reason. It was easy for them to convince themselves; how could they trust Obaseki who had not been fair to them in his appointments so far to be fair that they will be appointed, as he has promised, if they leave their revered positions for the APC members without any letters of appointments apart from mere promises? Secondly, while Obaseki campaigned round the 192 wards, he made several promises to the people – no one single one has been accomplished after over a year in power. Not the roads he promised were constructed, not the teachers he promised have been employed, not the security he said he would enhance have been done…all the promises were terminated. So the question in everyone’s lip was that if the governor could forsake all his campaign promises, how can they trust him with the empty promises that if they relinquish their positions as exco members, they will be given executive appointments in the government. Different meetings were held and the meeting held with the state chairman of the party was the climax of them all where it was unilaterally agreed that ‘no to harmonization.’ They PDP LGA chairmen went further to state without mincing words that Obaseki should ‘go’ with his appointments, they wish to hold on to their exco positions. And that brought an end to the more than 1 year dialogue on harmonization and integration.

Since then, Obaseki has objected for anarchic demonstration which even the leadership of the party at various national level had publicly repudiated with caution. He sort, through suspensions, to overthrow the PDP Excos and leaders of the party like the astute Chief Dan Orbih, Hon. Ogbiede-Ihama and others. But all his anarchic actions have either been made invalid through courts or the organs of the party where relevant sections of the party’s constitution has been pointed to his unseeing eyes to ponder.

The Comic-Tragedy of the harmonization inexperience has failed, yet the governor through deliberate excercise of blinding the minds of his willful followers to meaningful considerations is still sermonizing the failed version of harmonization veiled in deceit. These followers, preachers of uncertainties, group of gospellers of the godlike leadership of Obaseki in PDP are let loose in all the corners of Edo State, no one can persuade these apostles out of this mindless gospelling and teach them the infinite virtue of modesty, which is expected of a governor.

The governor is now hysterical; “I am the leader of the party, whoever does not like my leadership will excuse us!” His radical retrogressive political narratives and rhetorics are eroding his credibility. He exploits mundane and parochial sentiments to win converts and and to fuel his initiates to do wrong. He drums into their heads daily the awkward tragedy of his being. He is moving from all sensibilities to disorganized mood of obsession. He thinks himself as a monologue leader who must be listened to. His tone, that of loud jingosm, cannot sound afar without being laughed at. You will think he has fallen into a spell or even a trance like the Yemoje worshippers.

You must salute the indoctrinated zeal of the PDP members who has held fast to their consistent convictions under the leadership of Chief Dan Orbih and those seek revolutionary answers to the oppressive contradictions that has besieged Obaseki. These people, to me, have one fundamental trait in common – they bear a new political illumination that other generations of polticians must learn from. They have stayed in a compact solidarity without being ruffled like Obaseki even with his monstrous and arrogant demonstration of overt power, from the remove village of Kukuruku Hills to the Benin Urban center.  The hideous impact of Obaseki’s attitude and within the choices of responsible responses from PDP members, the isolationist has created new political heroes in Edo State no matter what happens afterwards.