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
