By OSAZE JESUOROBO
When for eight years, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole pretended to be
fighting the cause of the down trodden masses of Nigeria as President
of the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, people thought he was a God sent
messiah. Years later, the hypocrisy of his presumed struggles has
become public knowledge to right thinking Nigerians. It has become
public that for every strike the NLC under our loving comrade led the
nation into over fuel increase, the ultimate beneficiary was Adams
Oshiomhole. While one is yet to confirm the rumor making the rounds
that Adams Oshiomhole negotiated a percentage of the eventually agreed
fuel price for himself at every strike, the truth is quite obvious. Or
else, where did he make the money with which he built the mansion and
the ultra-modern reception hall/guest house in Iyahmo-his hometown;
definitely not from his stipends as NLC President nor from his
severance allowance as a factory operator in the Kaduna Textile Mill.
To the best of one’s knowledge, he did not before becoming governor
own any viable industry or business venture in Nigeria.
With the deceitful and dubious background of a messiah of the down
trodden, Adams Oshiomhole came into the gubernatorial race in Edo
State in 2006. As expected, he was easily embraced and accepted by the
good people of Edo State who wanted a change from the past eight
inactive years of the outgoing government of Lucky Igbinedion from
1999-2007. In embracing him, the good people of the state failed to
ponder on whether a man who could transcend four political
parties{Labour, PDP, ANPP and AC as it was then called} within a span
of four months in a desperate attempt to get a gubernatorial ticket
could be trusted. We also failed to see the danger inherent in
rallying round a man whose structure was anchored around the very
structure put in place by the very man that was accused of non
performance. We failed to realize that Oshiomhole’s locomotive was
being oiled, fueled and driven by the same people who were
instrumental to the failed government of Lucky Igbinedion. Ironically
these same people who had defected to ACN now turn round to castigate
the same PDP’s government in which they were major actors.
Many of us rallied round him, traversed the length and breathe of the
state campaigning with him, defended his votes on Election Day and of
course fought with him from the tribunal to the Court of Appeal. At
various stages, we were brutalized and tear gassed by both the
opposition and the security agents yet we remained resolute and stood
by him to ensure that the peoples’ mandate was not truncated. Little
did we know that a leopard never changes his colours. The moment he
settled down after the Court of Appeal judgment, our loving comrade
began to show his true nature. He started running a one man show and
never failed to impress on anybody who cared to listen that he was not
voted to power by ACN. The broom which was his companion during the
campaigns became taboo to him. The party flag was not to be hoisted in
his official cars, home or office. Curiously, these symbols of the
party which our loving comrade did not want to touch with a long stick
on assumption of office have now suddenly resurfaced in his possession
and the gullible ACN members are being carried away by his deceit.
Three years into his administration, the very people who trooped out
to ‘massively’ vote for him in 2007 are now groining heavily. What is
their reward? Over taxation, destruction of their houses and
businesses without compensation, non provision of essential social
amenities like pipe borne water, electricity etc. Where Lucky
Igbinedion and Osariemen Osunbor chastised the people with whips, our
loving comrade like the biblical King Rehoboam in 2nd Kings is
chastising them with scourges. The federal government policy of ‘no
work, no pay’ which he pretended to fight against as NLC President for
eight years, became his tool of repression against the state public
servants whenever they went on strike. The leadership of the NLC, JNC
and NUT were at various times openly insulted and maligned by their
ex-President whenever they threatened to call out or actually called
out their workers on strike. The public display of shame on television
last year where he openly insulted the secretary and leadership of the
NUT during his meeting with them is still very fresh in our memory.
Our loving comrade has in his three years as governor negated all the
tenets of his struggles as NLC President.
Most of his policies and statements for the past three years have been
characterized by summersault and reversals. He has portrayed his
government and himself as people who talk before they think. A recent
example is that of Major Oloye. In a public display of his usual
uncontrolled and unguarded moments, our loving comrade had Major Oloye
abused, brutalized and handcuffed in full glare of the television for
doing what the overzealous man thought he had his master’s mandate to
do. His offence? He demolished the houses of a man the Benins have
high regards for. To pacify the outrage of the Benins who our loving
comrade knows can and will truncate his second term ambition, he had
to sacrifice Major Oloye even though he had weeks earlier commended
him for demolishing the houses of some ordinary people. That act of
public disgrace elicited anger from Oloye’s military constituency some
of whom felt that a military man should not have been openly
humiliated forgetting that Oloye himself had destroyed the houses of a
more senior army officer for purely political reasons. Coupled with
the threat of Oloye’s kinsmen to also truncate his second term bid,
our loving comrade believing that the anger of the Benins had
subsided, quickly gave Oloye back his job. His compensation:-two brand
new cars including a jeep and millions of naira from the overtaxed
payers’ money. As if that was not bad enough, he stage-managed a
reception for Major Oloye at The School of Supply and Transport in
Benin where our loving comrade eulogized him. It was a repulsive sight
on television watching our loving comrade heaping praises on the same
man he demonized some weeks earlier. What did he want to achieve by
such shameful act? To woo the military to his side? They are more
intelligent than he thinks.
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole on assumption of office in 2008 in his native
intelligence readily read the mood of the state and thus rolled out
caterpillars and bulldozers in the name of road construction. With no
benchmark as a reference point after eight wasted years and surrounded
by the very architects of the eight wasted years, all manner of road
projects were awarded all over the state. In a hurry to be tagged
‘Action Governor’, all known procedures required in contracts award
were thrown to the winds. Our loving comrade single handedly awarded
virtually all the contracts without recourse to any Tenders Board and
of course the State Executive Council made up mainly of ‘Yes Sir’ men
and women were made to rubber stamp the already awarded contracts. The
result:-numerous reviews and outright revocations of dubiously awarded
contracts. Apart from the water fountain in Ring Road and the less
than half kilometer span Oba market road, no other orchestrated road
project has been completed in any part of the state for over three
years. Nobody, not even the Commissioners in charge of the various
projects have been able to say exactly the contract sum of the
projects and the amount paid so far. When they appeared before the
State House of Assembly last year, some of them could not state, when
asked by the legislators, what the contract sum of the various
projects were or what had been paid out as mobilization fee.
Most pathetic of all the projects is that of Airport Road, Benin City
which has become the most expensive road project in the world [this
project is a topic for another article]. Knowing fully well that these
road projects were by design not meant to be completed in his first
term in office, our loving comrade has decided to use them to
blackmail the people. His game plan is to ask the people to give him a
second tenure to complete the on-going projects knowing fully well
that he is going to abandon them if (God forbid) he gets a second
term.
Our loving comrade in three years has not embarked on any employment
or profit yielding project. The few functioning ones he met on ground
have been grounded by him. A sad case is that of Edo Line. The
governor appointed one of his cronies as chairman of the board of the
company, an action which irked the staff of the company. Haven served
as Chairman and Managing Director of the company under Lucky
Igbinedion, the staff knew his antecedents and thus rejected his
appointment. Rather than listen to the wisdom in the workers’
argument, our loving comrade opted to close down the profit making
company to pacify one man. What manner of man will close down a profit
making company for over a year to pacify a man who had in the past
contributed to the mismanagement of the company? What is the unholy
alliance between the two of them? One only prays that Edo Line does
not suffer the same fate Labour Transport Service suffered during his
tenure as NLC President.
The initial promises of our loving comrade on assumption of office
suggested that the state was on its way to Eldorado. However, events
of the past three years have shown that the administration is actually
bereft of meaningful ideas, lacking in focus and crude in its approach
to issues. If any thing, our loving comrade’s administration has only
succeeded in mounting some bogus, overvalued and designed to be
abandoned projects all over the state. In perpetuation of his
orchestrated programme of deceit and self-adulation, our loving
comrade has now bedecked the streets of Benin with bill boards
displaying his image and so called achievements. Even the ECTS buses
bought with funds from the Federal Government Mass Transit Scheme have
been labeled “Comrade Buses”.
In 2006, when many PDP members left the party to form the Action
Congress, we left with the belief that the internal democracy that was
not allowed to thrive in PDP then will be allowed in ACN. Though some
of us did not belong to nor believed in ‘Grace Group’ with its “No Man
is God” slogan, we embraced ACN thinking that ideas will be allowed to
flow freely and equal opportunities given to all. Even our loving
comrade adopted the “No to Godfathers” slogan. Three years on, it has
become obvious that our loving comrade is as hypocritical as other
apostles of the slogans. Those who sang “No Man is God”, themselves,
began to play God while “One man, one vote” began and ended with our
loving comrade’s election.
Today, godfatherism, which our loving comrade has strenuously
pretended to fight in the state, stinks to high heavens in ACN. Our
loving comrade having ramrodded the leaders of the party to submission
or made them to sell their rights to him has eventually become the
“Sole Administrator” of the party and the government. You cannot today
aspire to any party office or political position unless you have a
godfather or you are close to the children, wives or girlfriends of
the sole administrator and his cronies or you are ready to take
satanic oath of loyalty. The state of the party has degenerated to
such level that even the state chairman of the party has become a
glorified head who in most cases is not even consulted when decisions
on party issues are being taken by the sole administrator. Even the
“Oduma” and my pastor cousin have been reduced to pawns in the chess
board of the sole administrator. Their attempt to fight back on the
issue of who becomes the running mate to our loving comrade is doomed
to fail because the fight is not only selfish but also self-serving.
I must say at this juncture, that I was particularly impressed with
the internal democracy allowed to prevail last year in the ward and
state congresses of Edo State PDP to elect party officers where
transparency was the order of the day, thus unifying the various
factions that hitherto existed in the party. Also worthy of
commendation were their recently held ward congresses where ward
delegates to their gubernatorial primaries were freely elected. The
ultimate in the transparency displayed by the party was their just
concluded gubernatorial primaries. That day must have been the finest
moment for the party as the process which was beamed live worldwide
via satellite proved their critics wrong.
The same cannot however be said of ACN. Leadership in ACN in 2010 was
held in the most undemocratic and tyrannical manner in defiance of
democratic principles and constitutional guidelines. The congresses to
elect ward, local government and state party officers were anything
but democratic. Virtually all the officers that emerged were
handpicked by the sole administrator and his lackeys. Their favoured
candidates paraded the least qualifications with the lowest popularity
ratings hence today, whether at ward, local government or state
levels, they are most retroactive, retrogressive and primordial in
thought and deed. Most pathetic was the scenario at the state congress
held at Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre. While delegates from all over the
state waited for hours at the centre to choose their officers, the
party’s sole administrator and his accomplices were busy at Government
House drawing up the list of their anointed ones. Our loving comrade
arrived the venue at about 6pm where the prepared list of the anointed
ones was read to the delegates who like the plebeians in Shakespeare’s
‘Julius Caesar’ were asked to say ‘aai’ or ‘naa’. Of course, the aais
will always have it as it usually happens in both the National and
State Assemblies even when the naas are more. For their patience in
waiting for over ten hours just to shout aai and naa, they were each
rewarded with twenty thousand naira. Our dear comrade doled out over
twenty million naira of the over-taxed payers money to get his list
through. Yet he is a self-anointed apostle of ‘ONE MAN, ONE VOTE’.
This huge sum is equivalent of what late Professor Ambrose Alli used
to pay, annually, the bursary of ALL Bendel students in tertiary
institutions nationwide and abroad during his tenure as governor of
the old Bendel State yet our loving comrade has in the past three
years wickedly refused to do the same despite his over five hundred
million naira monthly unaudited security vote. I wish he could take
cue from the honesty and sincerity of Imo’s Governor Rochas Okorocha.
I am not surprised because it takes someone who has been to tertiary
institution to appreciate the value of university education.
When a so-called peoples’ governor makes it impossible for the
peoples’ will to be asserted through internal democracy in his party,
he makes an uprising inevitable. Surely, any group that is headed by a
repressive leader gets to a point where the oppressed majority charges
forth from its position of disadvantage to upstage the oppressive
minority. That is the stage where the silent majority of ACN members
say they are virtually getting to. They remind our loving comrade that
one of the many challenges facing him in the build-up to this year’s
governorship election is their earnest desire for true internal
democracy in the party where the will of the majority is allowed to
reign above and over every selfish and mundane interest. They further
remind him of their desire to have local government elections before
his own election in July. The ACN youths say, if beyond these
challenges, our loving comrade does not hold local government
elections before the governorship election or if he goes on to
single-handedly pick the candidates in the said election they are
demanding for, he might as well be digging his political grave that
will swallow him up politically in July.
The party members also accuse our dear comrade as having laid a bad
foundation of the development of dictatorship, feudal family rule,
totalitarian and other variants of suppressive governance both in
party affairs and in government. Like Robert Mugabe, they say, our
loving comrade, yesterday’s freedom fighter has turned out to be a
dictator haven ascended power. The loving comrade they say has
gradually made the mistake of building a personality cult around their
collective electoral victory in the state. These, they say are
albatross the other parties will harp on during the coming
electioneering campaigns. Finally, they remind him of the warning of
the great philosopher, Alexander Pope on attitude to history by homo
sapiens when he said; “Those who fail to listen to the lessons of
history will sooner or later crash tragically to the dust and be
sniffed by the dogs of history”. Time will tell if the majority is
wrong. Till next time, I rest my case.
Tomb
raiders have dug up more than 100 graves at a cemetery in Benin, since
Saturday for what authorities suspect is a black-market trade in human
organs and skulls, for voodoo ritual fetishes.
