Edo: Between Ihonvbere and Obahiagbon

1. Patrick Obahiagbon 2. Julius Ihonvbere

ON Wednesday, November 14, about 48 hours after his inauguration for a second term of four years as the governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole made certain key appointments, two of which seem to be eliciting much public curiosity and scrutiny. The appointments are those of Professor Julius Ihonvbere as Secretary to the State Government (SSG) and Honourable Patrick Obahiagbon as the new Chief of Staff.
To many residents, the appointments, though unexpected, were not shocking, given their realisation that with Oshiomhole, who they think is fast becoming an iconoclast, there would be no dull moment in the renewed pledge to continue to reinvent the state which goes by the sobriquet, Heartbeat of the Nation.
Oshiomhole’s admirers believe that, by the two appointments, he has shown the direction he seeks to take Edo in his second term.
Persons who applaud the coming on board of Professor Ihonvbere regard him as a man of high intellect and oratorical prowess. Ihonvbere obtained his Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU)), Ile-Ife, Osun State. He later acquired a Master of Arts in International Affairs from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and subsequently earned a PhD in Political Science in 1984 from the University of Toronto, Canada.
He taught at the University of Ife as an assistant lecturer in International Relations and lectured in Political Science at the University of Port Harcourt. Ihonvbere was a visiting professor in Political Science at the University of Toronto, Canada. But in 1993, he relocated to the United States of America, where he was an Associate Professor in Political Science at Houston-Tillotson College, Austin, Texas. His final lectureship position was at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was Professor of Government. He then joined the Ford Foundation as a Programme Officer in Governance and Civil Society.
Ihonvbere’s areas of expertise cover but are not limited to, disciplines such as the African economic crisis, politics of oil, Nigeria’s foreign policy, environmental degradation, ethnic and religious violence and democracy. This award-winning academic, rights activist and prolific author’s “style of scholarship has been referred to as progressive in its avoidance of historical ideals as its benchmark and thus linking theory to practice, therein shunning scholarship as an end in itself.”
It is opined that Ihonvbere’s ability to translate theory into practice was further exhibited in his political activism as a profound participant of the Nigerian Diaspora pro-democracy movement as Vice President of the United Democratic Front for Nigeria, and in his involvement with Radio Democracy International, later Radio Kudirat.
The former Special Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Programme and Policy Monitoring was a governorship aspirant on the platform of the PDP during the 2007 elections, but lost to Professor Oserheimen Osunbor in a primary election whose circumstances were contentious. He returned again in 2011 for the governorship ticket on the same political platform. He and other contestants lost, this time in February 2012, to Major General Charles Airhiavbere (retd) in another bitterly contested primary election, whose result they did not accept.
Ihonvbere is seen as one person who could have used his flamboyant, but popular campaign appeal, which he deployed in 2007, or invented a more ingenious one to tackle Oshiomhole and the ACN if he had emerged the PDP candidate for the July 14, 2012 gubernatorial election in the state. But this was not to be as the odds were apparently more challenging. But there are political analysts who argued that either Ihonvbere underrated the challenge  or he did not really apply himself diligently to the task of clinching the PDP governorship ticket for the July election. He hails from Uzzeba in Edo North Senatorial District, the same district as Governor Oshiomhole.
Overtime, however, it became clear that he was becoming disillusioned with the PDP because, according him, perhaps except Chief Tony Anenih, who is at the top echelon of the party, no other person from the state had done more national service to the party than him. And so few people expressed surprise when, sometime in June 2012, just about a month to the governorship election, Ihonvbere defected to the ruling Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the state.
Given his evidently more than enough qualification to hold any high political office anywhere in the world, and with specific reference to his own controversially unsuccessful attempts to become the governor of Edo, some people think that Ihonvbere’s appointment and his acceptance of the position of SSG in the administration of Oshiomhole, a former political foe, is an anathema. But the professor of political science would not subscribe to this ‘stereotype,’ an action that testified to his own proclamation of himself as “Julius Ihonvbere: Where theory meets praxis.”
Speaking shortly after taking the oath of office, on Thursday, November 15, Ihonvbere said: “People plan but God decides what will happen. I thank the ACN for considering me for the appointment. It is not the position that matters but what you do with it; you must have the spirit of service, which should be applied at any level.”
On his part, Obahiagbon, popularly known as Igodomigodo, holds a Bachelor degree in Law (LL.B) and Barrister at Law (B.L in Law), as well as Master in Public Administration and another Master in International History and Diplomacy. He was elected into the State House of Assembly in 1999, where he represented Oredo East Constituency as a member of PDP. He was re-elected on the same platform for the same constituency seat in the Assembly in 2003. Obahiagbon served as Majority Leader of the Assembly. In 2007, after serving two terms of eight years as a state legislator, Obahiagbon was elected as member representing Oredo Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, also on the platform of the PDP.
Half way into his first term as a federal lawmaker, Obahiagbon defected to ACN, from where he made an unsuccessful bid to return to the lower chamber of the National Assembly during the April 2011 elections. This failure did not seem to deter him or dampen his drive, for he bounced back to anchor Oshiomhole’s governorship campaign rallies as the number one compere. Obahiagbon’s conviction in the Oshiomhole administration is partly captured in this statement: “Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has given meaning to governance. Edo State, which was in a state of economic quagmire, political phantasmagoria and social stupor, is being gradually transmogrified into a state of infrastructural Eldorado.”
At the House, he served in a number of committees, namely those of Anti-Corruption, Ethics and Value, Appropriations, Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes, Ethics and Privileges, Federal Capital Territory, Media/Public Affairs, NDDC, Pension, as well as Power.Both Ihonvbere and Obahiagbon are men with a great gift of the garb. However, while Ihonvbere sometimes deploys academic concepts in his use of language before a semi-literate or even completely illiterate audience, Obahiagbon befuddles his audience no matter how highly sophisticated. He does this with his grandiose combination of English words, Latin and Greek expressions in manners that, at times, appear comical and, at other times, strip his message of any iota of meanings.
Here are two examples of language use or a combination of words and coinages which Oshiomhole may face in Obahiagbon. The first is: “Fifty years after independence, we are still talking about zoning? It is reflective of the fact that Nigeria still wallows in a state of medicinal statism, cankerous tribalism, egocentric chauvinism, syphilitic parochialism, epileptic nepotism, catalytic kparapoism and state brigandish of the bluest dile.”
The second is: “As we celebrate our flag and shambolic autarky at 52, we must realise that Nigeria is still more of a geographic contrivance as has been rightly posited by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Not with our centrifugal excrescences preponderating over our centripetal proclivities. It’s a matter for mental pabulum that we are daily drifting into our ethnic cocoons. We still remain one country with disparate ethnic agendas and I can say it for the umpteenth time again that we must sit down in a sovereign national colloquy to discuss the basis for our nationhood. Anything short of this is just vacuous scahiamachy.”
Jokes are rife that with the coming together of Ihonvbere and Obahiagbon as principal officers of the same administration, Governor Oshiomhole may need the services of a special dictionary after consulting with this class of aides. Nevertheless, a lot of people are convinced that in Ihonvbere, Oshiomhole appointed a man in whom “theory meets praxis,’and that in Ihonvbere and Obahiagbon appointments, Oshiomhole himself demonstrated the meeting and meaning of theory and praxis by including them as principal members of his emerging cabinet. Oshiomhole’s decision was presumably taken not minding when the duo joined the ACN and after satisfying himself that they had brought value to his cause.
NigerianTribune