Did Oshiomhole Fool Nigerians?

 EPHRAIM AIGBEKAEN

General Charles Airhiavbere (rtd), the People’s Democratic Party candidate in the July 14, 2012 gubernatorial election in Edo State is originating a summons from the Election Petition Tribunal to determine: whether the certificates that Governor Oshiomhole brandishes are equivalent to the requirements of the Electoral Law and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; whether or not he owns them bona fide and whether they were duly issued by the authenticating institution paraded by the governor and which Airhiavbere believes is anachronistic in time-space dimension.
The prayers of the General are as credible as they are important. Does Governor Oshiomhole possess or not a valid educational qualification? The long years in which all Nigerians have been in the dark about the governor’s real educational qualification do not reduce the validity of that document as a constitutional requirement nor does his arguable performance as governor for the period smoothen out the rough edges of a wrongdoing. What is wrong is, eternally and for all ages, wrong.
Now there may be a few Nigerians who question the audacity of Airhiavbere’s challenge, arguing that performance in a public office or any office for that matter may not, at all times, be defined by educational qualification and that four more years of governance under Governor Oshiomhole cannot hurt Edo State too much and could, as a matter of fact, see a consolidation of the governor’s achievements. These group of people need to be reminded of the dangers of rules-bending and the attendant risk of the inability to know when to stop.
A constitutional requirement is a binding charter on the rich as readily as on the poor and on the educated as readily as on the educationally challenged. As governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole represents its people in the committee of states and far and beyond the shores of Nigeria. Every good or wrong decision he makes in that capacity has far reaching repercussions to every indigene of the state.
So it will be proper and most comforting if the people could be sure that their representative has the mental capacity to make a right, educated and informed decision, at all times, on behalf of them. In pure and simple terms, it works in the same way as demanding to see the driver’s license of a neighbour, at the point where you consider hiring him, even though you have actually observed him uneventfully drive a car for a number of years
Airhiavbere is asking the question for all Nigerians. For history; for the present; for the future and for what it is worth, Nigerians need to know if Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole possesses a valid educational qualification of any kind. The discomfiture caused the governor by the retired General’s demands from the Tribunal may not have been intended and he cannot now apologize for it either.
Perhaps what sympathy the governor had enjoyed in the past is swallowed up in the inordinacy of his talk activeness especially in the name-calling that was a constant feature of his campaign during the electioneering period. The hate game and the desire to make people see the world through his own eyes are still a constant feature of the Oshiomhole thesis.
He demonstrated that he cannot help himself in this regard when he made, as is eternally his attitude, a gratuitous reference, in his second-tenure inaugural speech, to fang-clammed, white-flag-waving and unarmed perceived enemies who had publicly called truce, so to speak. In several of his unguarded tirades during the campaign era, Governor Oshiomhole referred to the graduate retired General and an Accountant as a ‘mere cashier’.
The support and sympathy the governor once enjoyed are speedily, steadily and increasingly waning. A marked point in that ebb came on November 12, 2012 at his inauguration for a second tenure. Everybody waited with baited breath for answers to some open questions.
Neither in the governor’s read citation nor in his personal inaugural speech was any reference made to his educational qualification which, up to that point in time, was the bane of the very essence of the Oshiomhole persona. It was also the determinant of his continued stay in office as governor depending on the performance of Airhiavbere’s challenge before the elections tribunal.
And the writer of the citation, in an attempt to tactfully throw a hood over the issue, left everyone with no doubt that indeed, Governor Oshiomhole’s pride and vaunted achievements center principally around his stint as NLC Chief – an office demanding of no formal educational qualification.
Unlike and in comparison to the citation of the deputy governor at the same event and just as happened at the pre-election debates organized by the Nigeria lections Debates Group, NEDG, the governor’s educational history was conspicuously left out.
It is unambiguously etched in the minds of every Nigerian now, that at least, the certificate thing, for Governor Oshiomhole, is a gargantuan issue. Also very clear is that the governor is only being a Nigerian who would self-righteously uphold and defend on any side instead of feeling sorry and apologizing for an action that is shamefacedly implicative.
And a lot of people know the truth too. Even people from inside the governor’s camp. Every passing day, some of these people are torn between standing up for the governor or dignifiedly withdrawing support. But they are also Nigerians and that is saying a lot.
Governor Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, understandably, would rather the whole nightmares go away. Vanish. Nothing in his past experience will compare to the trauma that a loss at the tribunal will occasion him. By the time he finally leaves office – if the law squares up with him through the tribunals – he too would go down the minds of Edo majority as another failed governor.
His copious use of propaganda, unionism and the power of oratory would have been fully exposed to the bulk of the uneducated masses as the chance picking of a man intent on cajoling and deceiving with sugar-coated tongue.
Leadership