Who Can Stop Airhiavbere?
By Okharedia Ihimekpen

The voice betrayed his emotions. He tried to be as calm as he could, possibly managed talking, as it were, on such a highly volatile issue. But the frustration was palpable. You could almost feel it. Finally he uttered with utter exasperation, “Airhiavbere must be supported to go to the court tribunal”. The meeting was at ubiaja, the country home of Senator Odion Ugbesia, senator representing Edo central senatorial districts.
Such a verdict coming from top member of the Peoples Democratic Party, clearly indicates the seriousness of the political division between the Edo state leadership and followership of the party. The Speaker, whose face wore a painted look swamped with a feeling of betrayal, is a highly regarded member of the Edo elite. He is also one of those aspirants whose presidential ambitions have apparently gone up in smoke in the matrix of the June 12, 1993 presidential election that produced the late M.K.O Abiola in the defunct Social Democratic Party.
But if members of the stakeholders of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP feels marginalized and not being carried along in the party’s decision to withdraw from the suit challenging the July 14 governorship and the eligibility of Adams Oshiomhole, what about the candidate General Charles Airhiavbere himself who was not part of that decision, apparently the party leadership shaving his hair in his absence.
The lack of political will in the PDP has long been identified as the major odd against the party’s progress in the state, and this goes as far back as 2003, when inspite of the loud cry that Lucky Igbinedion as a PDP governor has performed below expectation, the party represented him before Edo electorate with a declaration that there was no vacancy in Government House. The second was when the party could not discipline Igbinedion when he formed the “Grace group” within the PDP as a platform to launch the ACN and Oshiomhole in the state and the third is the recent betrayal of their governorship candidate General Charles Airhiavbere as they withdraw from the election petition tribunal.
We are fully aware that the comrade governor came to office through the instrumentality of the same court tribunal and ever since it has been the norm that all electoral contests end in the court of law. The question then is what does the PDP got to lose if they file behind their candidate to the end. Except there are other agenda behind the party leaders position, the PDP should realize fast, that had Oshiomhole had these certificates being alleged to have been forged, as a propagandist Oshiomhole would have placed them on advertorials, on his comrade buses to bike rides and in the Ring Road for the people to see.
This perhaps is giving confidence and impetus to the PDP faithfulls to go on with Airhiavbere just as the party’s withdrawal from the suit is fastly painting the state leadership of the party in the negative. To compound issues for the party, it is the later immigrants into the party, from the ACN most of whom lost out at different elections primaries in the ACN and had become electoral liabilities that had now positioned themselves as the mouthpiece of the PDP in the state. What a pity…
Another germane question is, assuming Airhiavbere even has no case to prove at the tribunal, what does the party stand to lose, if they support him to prove that the party justly, are proud of having the General, as their flag-bearer to whom they are justly committed, come rain, come sunshine.
General Airhiavbere has gone to the Edo state election tribunal to challenge the election of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and also the academic credentials he presented on oath which is alleged to have been fake. Oshiomhole has in turn responded that, the tribunals dismiss the petition in the light that the electoral act did not specify any specific academic qualification to contest for the office of a governor. The issue therefore borders on perjury and forgery, and not educational equivalent of a school certificate.
Who knows perhaps Oshiomhole needed not to have presented the certificate afterall, if in his view the “suya mallam, pepper and tomato seller” can contest the office of a governor of a state, or put it the other way the Okharedia Ihimekpen would not have needed to send their children to school, if they too can be governors and president without education, and do not need to have specific educational qualifications. Another issues is the disconnect in the names in the certificate so presented, “Adams Aliu and Aliyu Adams” without Oshiomhole in them, when in the same form he has earlier admitted that he has never had any change of name nor added any additional names in his certificates. Then who is fooling who?
For me I really sympathize with the comrade governor who has thus be humbled by the controversy. When last I saw him in the Samuel Ogbemudia’s birthday celebration, he wore a pensive and stoic look that typifies the tragedy of a peevish school boy in an examination hall who only remembered the solution to a problem when the time was up. For me if he could scale through 2007 without presenting these certificates, it was a grievous fault to have presented them now.
Even if he eventually snaps out of this political liturgy, he will still have a long way to go. From all indications, he and his ACN are so politically disorganized today that if they were to be graciously offered an alternative option to this quandary by the tribunal, they may not know how to handle it. Haven been so used for so long to arrogance just to survive politically, the opportunity to be calm for once may be too tempting for the comrade governor to accept; hence there seems no one in sight that can stop Airhiavbere in this political duel.