Edo 2024: APC… Never Again
By Erasmus Ikhide
THE All Progressives Congress (APC) has been redesignated as “Another Problem Coming” (APC) in Edo State, and has become calamitous in all parts of the country. Sentiments, potential biases and socio-political perceptions drool the party and its muted layback candidate, Senator Monday Okpebholo as leprous that should avoided like plagues – by all means, and at all costs. If you think APC/Okpebholo is redeemable, I have a bridge to sell to you. As with the unexampled Presidency of Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the center, so it is with Senator Okpebholo and other pretentious claimants to political power like Senator Adams Oshiomole who are quick at rewriting Edo State and Nigeria immediate history.
It would amount to Edo State people counting their eggs before they’re hatched if we ignored Tinubu’s administration’s tragic missteps and rank incompetence that threw the entire nation into wanton economy turmoil over the last one year. The sobering epiphany is that his body-double, Senator Monday Okpehbolo doesn’t have the preparation, the education, the mental capabilities, the staying courage, the competence, the moral strength to govern any local council in Nigeria.
To say that Senator Okpebholo, even with his little education would avoid being unfathomably clueless like President Tinubu would be expecting a goat to give birth to a lion. For Tinubu to have anointed the candidacy of Senator Monday Okpebholo in the midst of eminent and prominent aspirants like Prof Sylvester Odion Akhaine (SOA), Prof Oserheimen Osunbor, Dr Chris Ogiemwonyi, Clem Agba, Pastor Ize-Iyamu, Festus Ebeha, to mention but few, then the late Sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was right after all, when he said, “it is only the deep that can call unto the deep”. It’s on records that the imposition of Senator Monday Okpebholo is the most brazenly unjust and the silliest joke in the entire Edo State political history.
The scorn-worthy lies, double-standard, deceit and the crying of unjustness of Adams Oshiomhole’s earlier rejection of Senator Okpebholo’s candidacy has suddenly evaporated. Oshiomhole is cornered to pathetic position as the Campaigner-in-Chief who now referred to Senator Okpebholo as an individual whose “engine is okay but the heart slow”, a subtle smear and mockery of Okpehbolo’s unregenerated candidacy. We’re yet to see more of Adams Oshiomhole addressing Senator Okpebholo in borrowed or actual robes. We would soon be witnessing irredeemable disaster that Oshiomhole has become in the course of the electioneering where he would be erecting false moral pedestal as the best Governor Edo State has ever had, regardless of his chaquered administration with abominable gross abuse of state power.
In construct, Oshiomhole has no novel agenda for the ‘Edo Dream’, but simply setting up Senator Okpebholo as his poodle. That is why most Edo electorates have concluded that Senator Okpebholo has lost the governorship race before he started it because he was not Oshiomhole’s original candidate.
Between 2008 and 2016 Mr. Oshiomhole rule balefully the rust of Edo State with thugs and touts with iron fist where corruption and abuse of power reigned supreme. There was hardly a day passed without protest from citizens driving home their demands for the most basics of human existence e.g, electricity; drainages, roads, landgrabing, pensioners agitations and the likes. For average an Edo voters, a return to such destructive era of outright brigandage where brute force became official policy of state craft is a hell that must never be experienced again.
Besides, there are questions and doubts about the viability of Senator Monday Okpebholo’s Governorship with the belief that should he be elected Governor of the state, he will remain a puppet in the hands of Adams Oshiomhole and the litany of his godfathers. This concern is predicated on the colourlessness of his politics, the dunceness of carriage, the timidity of his charisma and the obvious incapacitation due to his ultra illiteracy.
Annoyingly, there’s unhealthy secrecy about Senator Monday Okpebholo’s immediate and secondary family background, apart from the tails of losing his only sister in soda-socking accident that led to her death. Edo people would be glad to have his wives campaign alongside with him in this election, except the governorship is above his pay grade.
Erasmus Ikhide contributed this piece via: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com
