OPINION: Where does Obaseki go from here? by Temilorun Asorobi
Editor's note: Public affairs commentator, Temilorun Asorobi, posits that Governor Godwin Obaseki has done his second term bid devastating damage with his actions regarding the Edo state House of Assembly where the governor's supporters and his opponents are at loggerheads.
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When the axe dropped on the re-election bid of Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo state recently, it cut so deep that healing from it before the governorship poll on September 19 would be a miracle akin to zero coming up on a roulette table with the last try.
Last Thursday, the long-drawn Edo House of Assembly crisis reached a crescendo with the impeachment of the factional speaker, Frank Okiye, by 17 lawmakers. It is a 24-member House with Okiye and nine others loyal to Obaseki hitherto calling the shots while the remaining 14 lawmakers were not inaugurated and their seats controversially declared vacant by the Okiye-led minority.
Alas, three of Okiye’s nine supporters, including the deputy speaker, Yekini Idiaye, later joined the 14 lawmakers to make a total 17, yet, Idiaye was promptly and crudely impeached by Okiye and his six-man team. It was all part of the mischievous machination of a power-drunk governor. But events played out contrary to Obaseki’s draconian plot.
Source: UGC
Shortly after the inauguration of the 17 lawmakers, Obaseki caused the roof of the Assembly complex to be removed while heaps of sand and gravels for a purported renovation were dumped at the gate, therefore, preventing entry or any decent sitting by the lawmakers.
The lawmakers, then, beseeched the minister of justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to intervene and he wrote to the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, asking him to provide adequate security for the lawmakers to prevent a possible breakdown of law and order.
The timely call by the AGF sounded the death knell on Obaseki’s second term bid and for those, who believe in karma served as a comeuppance for his blasé injustice against legitimately elected lawmakers.
For many weeks after the Assembly ought to have been inaugurated in 2019, Obaseki refused to initially order a proclamation, in line with constitutional provisions, to clear the way for the inauguration and constitution of the seventh assembly.
This reluctance, which would later snowball into an open confrontation, was reportedly predicated on the governor’s belief that he did not have enough foot soldiers in the Assembly as against the number loyal to his predecessor and former national chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.
His deliberate dithering caused further depletion in the number of the lawmakers loyal to him and he vowed that the doors of the assembly would remain shut for as long as he desired.
This elicited outrage from well-meaning Nigerians, who warned him against what he was doing as unconstitutional and that it had dire political consequences. Still, no amount of intervention or appeal could sway Obaseki.
Like a dog fated to loss and misfortune, it would not hear the whistle of the hunter. Obaseki had made up his mind to deny the good people of Edo adequate legislative representation while fighting his benefactors to the finish.
When he eventually inaugurated the house, he exempted a majority of the duly elected lawmakers and enabled illegality to run and reign. He forgot that the bread always falls on the buttered side; that he who sows the wind will inevitably reap the whirlwind.
Now that he is self-destruct and fighting the battle of his political life, with the consequent distraction from electioneering, Obaseki has, conversely, traded a sound, issue-based campaign for brigandage, where he is a neophyte. September 19 is almost a foregone conclusion for Obaseki. It takes not much to see this.
What should have been a two-horse race between him and Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu of the APC has become a home run for the latter, who opinion polls and popular sentiments favour. The consensus now is that despite his incumbency, Obaseki is the architect of the misfortune that has truncated his re-election bid in midstream.
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Now that he was actually expected to experience what it means to campaign for a governorship election, he has short-circuited the process and done his second term bid devastating damage that has ultimately foreclosed whatever chances he and his soap-opera cheer-leaders thought he had on September 19.
Read more on the Edo election here.
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APC disqualifies Obaseki from Edo guber primaries | Legit TV
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