By Kassim Afegbua.
The desperation of Governor Obaseki to install his annointed candidate, Asue Akintunde Ighodalo, is now at a fever pitch and riding on the bloody path of Golgothar. Yes, the plot is meant to spill blood everywhere. The present game being orchestrated by the state government by all manner of tricks, plots, sub-plots and deliberate machinations is quite unfortunate; but Edo will withstand him.
Edo citizens will not be sacrificed to the baals of desperation. Edo citizens will be alive to tell the continuation story of how they survived the despotism of Godwin Obaseki after the second invasion of Benin Palace; even though the monarchy of Benin is seriously under threat. Roosevelt said in one of his homilies, that a leader contemplates his successor the same way he contemplates death. We have come to the epicentre of such reality; where the thought of APC succeeding Governor Obaseki is giving the outgoing governor serious nightmares; the thought of defeat for him, is scary; and as with Macbeth, everyone is perceived as the enemy.
Frustrations, desperation, machinations, manipulations, fearfulness, suspicion, drunkenness and intoxication have all combined to bake the psychological trauma that is depressively overwhelming the governor as he battles to remain relevant by producing a successor; and the height of the resistance to his plot benumbs the governor everyday.
He has resorted to various tricks; this one is a very old trick that exposes the hypocrisy and double standards of a man who made noises to the rooftops against godfatherism a few years ago, now cavorting about the place wearing the garb of a godfather: He has decided to recruit some of his footsoldiers into his phlegmatic vigilante group, which is presently being trained in the Edo Hotel premises.
The plan is to after training, engage them as Governor Obaseki’s footsoldiers; with the name, Obaseki Police, and illegally arm them to visit mayhem on members of the opposition, APC. Another trick is his declaring of Okhaighele as an illegal body and banning them barely five months to his exit from office; and in a third furtive move, he is pretending to be fighting against cultism, whereas some of his principal officers in government are alleged to be members of different cult groups, ready to unleash mayhem in the state.
The whole idea is to accuse and arrest some members of the APC who are major stakeholders in the state and brand them as cultists, in order to send fear into town that the streets would be brutal. He plans that on election day, members of his vigilante group would dress in police uniforms acquired through subterranean means and disguised as members of the Nigeria Police Force to do the bidding of the outgoing governor.
