Dear ‘Comrade’ President Bola Ahmed Tinubu,
To so many Nigerians, who do not get to know your consistent antecedents, that are slanted to selfless pursuits and concrete desires to make life better for the Nigerian public, they would be at loss or confused as to why I have to address you as ‘Comrade’.
The Wikipedia online encyclopedia tells us that “Comrade” is a person who shares one’s interests or activities…
When a bird is in a flock, it also speaks about it belonging to the collective, and its ornithology.
Mr. President, you’re a rare specie of the internecine struggles for democracy, a just and true-Nigeria of free-human-enterprise for all Nigerians, about which providence has now placed on you the overall leadership – being the number-one citizen of our dear country.
But numerous Nigerians of the median age – the youth, scantily know of your truest nationalistic antecedents, and that you were one of those who fought gallantly (and still fighting) for the well-being of our people, especially for the entrenchment of democracy and good governance.
But, it is similar to what “Things Fall Apart”, says that “looking at the lips of a king, one would think he didn’t suckle his mother’s breast”
Ọ ọ
Ẹ ẹ
“Eke n’ agbọn na ma ọmwan ẹre agbọn yere” in Edo language suggests that the world is only interested in the sunny side of a man’s life and not his up and down. “Things Fall Apart” is a classic tragic novel penned by the evergreen storyteller, the same Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian of the African descent, that you knew.
Your Excellency, let me rephrase the theme and direct message of this piece, that unless the senatorial primary election of the Edo South senatorial district, which was convincingly won by Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, if not given to him, could be the albatross of the Edo South and state APC, in projection of your winning the state in your 2027 presidential election.
Honestly, it would thwart the 2.5 million and 2.3 million votes continually for your election in the state, by Senator Monday Okpebholo and Emperor Jarret Tenebe, the state governor and chairman of the Edo APC, respectively.
The recognition and pronouncement of Pastor Ize-Iyamu as true winner of the last APC primary election of Edo South, by Mr President and the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party, if not in favour of Ize-Iyamu, its winner, would be another annulment and injustice akin to the June 12, 1993 presidential election, clearly won by the late Chief MKO Abiola, a chain-incident that we had all fought to upturn, so relentlessly.
Aside this national tragedy which pitted your good-self and I in the same trenches of the diaspora chapter of the defunct National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), as a protege of the late sage and nationalist, Chief Anthony Enahoro, there had been some other cases of injustice, a labour of love and cumbersome steps of faith for Nigeria, that had made your good-self, I and other discerning Nigerians, as demonstrative specimens and a Siamese of the fervour and rugged fight for nationhood.
Lest I forget!
Back to Nigeria, after the NADECO exile, I had several opportunities meeting you again early in 1999 as the Alliance for Democracy (AD) was formed.
Even though I was a Secretary General of the Niger Delta Youth Movement (NDYM), then a regional body that pioneered resource control agitations for the states and regions of the country, I and your late great friend, Mmuen Kpagane, the Ogoni man from Rivers State, who was NDYM’s president, had explicit confidence in you. Whilst I was a valuable facilitator of AD in Lagos State, I had helped to mobilise non-Yoruba and civil society groups for your first and second elections as Lagos State governor.
Severally, you hosted me with our groups through the assistance of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, your former point-man and Commissioner for Work, whom you once detailed me and the late Mmuen Kpagane, Elvis Amadi and Mike Nweleighi of NDYM, to meet with and project the Port Harcourt-based late Chief Zeb Abule, who was presidential aspirant of AD. That was in 2003, when you opted to return as Lagos governor.
Then, there was a problem, when the South West AD governors campaigned vigorously for the presidential reelection of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The NDYM executives had met you again, with Babatunde Raji Fashola as facilitator.
Our main concern was that it was dangerous to holistically support the Chief Obasanjo’s reelection, which may seal off the hope of other AD governors’ return. Then our meeting with you at Alausa was interrupted, whilst you requested us to write a report for you. We did.
We didn’t hear from you again until I met you in your Alausa office with the late Mr Young Arebanme, the then Lagos State commissioner of Police. I remembered what we discussed and my insistence that unless you put certain things in order, your re-election could be rigged. I remember when you thanked me “as the commanding little voice”, just as I can’t afford to now go into further details, for the obvious reasons.
I was a journalist and civil rights activist in Lagos, who got the real invisible vibrations from the air!
In 2006, I had returned to Edo, my home-state, on the calls by the late Comrade Didi Adodo, Baba Omojola and Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, to mobilise the civil society for his election, from my immediate position in a national executive of the Labour & Civil Society Coalition (LASCO).
When Oshiomhole wasn’t declared winner, Edo LASCO, with me continued as the pivot, and was in the heat of the struggle for revalidation of the Oshiomhole’s mandate, from Prof Osereimen Osunbor, my relation.
Your Excellency, something struck me about you, like a Shepherd, who knows his many sheep. You gave me a bear hug and instant interview at the airport. I was shocked that you had recognised and called me by my first name. That was in the heat of a controversial event organised by the Oshiomhole’s government, called “One Man, One Vote”.
You stopped attending it because some persons closed to you were aggrieved that General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), who was called anti-democrat that annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election of Chief Abiola, was invited to the same event.
I am a slave to my convictions, and not what others may try to dictate. A highlight of my article on the Edo event was that it was the “like of IBB”, the said enemy of democracy, that deserved invitation to such events that was to impart democratic niceties, than for the attendance of the Prof Wole Soyinkas, the Dr Kayode Fayemis, the Femi Falanas, and the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubus and others, who were adepts of democracy.
“Aghi ru mwẹn ọna, ikpia hia awa re na”. The Benins say categorical that; “Doing a man wrongs and saying he is also stupid, is what all men forbids”.
This is to condemn the injustice and ill-treatment being meted out to Pastor Ize-Iyamu, a two-time governorship candidate of Edo APC and its (undisputed) most prominent APC stalwart in Edo South, and perhaps of the state, who commands teeming followers and winning streaks.
The skewed rejection of Ize-Iyamu and manipulation of the primaries, soon manifested in the open, when Jarret Tenebe, evoked his usual hateful public remarks, that his state APC will not give its flagbearer ticket to ‘a serial loser’ in the primary election, an innuendo directed at Ize-Iyamu, who had lost three governorship elections.
This, however, went against the position of the APC’s NWC that all should go for direct contests, where consensus candidacy failed.
Not yet done, Tenebe, who is 62 years old publicly regarded Ize-Iyamu, a 63 years old as overage for the senatorial office, whereas Joseph Ikpea, a man picked from Edo Central is 65, while Senator Oshiomhole, a consensus returnee candidate from Tenebe’s Edo North district, is approaching 80 years of age.
What a reckless tongue ‘bad belle’ and injustice!
In concerted efforts to stop Ize-Iyamu from the contest, the state Deputy Governor, Rt. Hon Dennis Idahosa, who couldn’t win his backyard Ovia Federal Constituency of two local governments (LGAs), in the last governorship election that brought him to power, had traversed the LGAs to endorse Engr. Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama, a former House of Reps member, and a deserter to APC from the PDP, said to be imposed on Senator Monday Okpebholo and Edo APC by Hon Nyesom Wike, Federal Capital Territory’s Minister and Senator Oshiomhole, who are not from Edo and its South APC, respectively.
Governor Okpebholo, acting the Wike and Oshiomhole’s script, was alleged to have all through also masterminded Tenebe, his deputy, Chief Lucky Imasuen and a retinue of other Edo South APC leaders to champion the moves to impose Ogbeide-Ihama, a gambit that failed because the mass of Edo South APC supporters and its voters are behind Ize-Iyamu.
In a result of the South zonal primary, in which Ize-Iyamu reportedly recorded the longest queues of voters across the 7 Edo South LGAs and its 77 wards, he was declared a winner by landslide, whilst Ogbeide-Ihama came second, and incumbent Senator Neda Imasuen came third as announced by the APC national election returning officer.
Another set of results were read by the Ogbeide-Ihama backed NWC officer, showing him as displacing the most accepted Ize-Iyamu scoring a patry votes, to the third position. Imasuen, the underdog of the primaries came second.
In a twist, Senator Imasuen, who had defected from the Labour Party (LP) to APC, had queried the authenticity of results that placed him second, whereas the government’s backed APC members and thugs had stopped him from voting in his ward, LGA and all through.
In another episode alleged to impose Ogbeide-Ihama, the revered Monarch of the Benin kingdom (Edo South), HRM Oba Ewuare II, the Oba of Benin, who had a coincidental date with the primaries, visiting President Tinubu in Abuja, was scandalized by Ize-Iyamu’s opponents that the fatherly and apolitical Benin traditional symbol was sent to stop the announcement the victory of Ize-Iyamu, whose father was a prominent palace chief in the respected kingdom, for Ogbeide-Ihama’s.
Still playing the Oba of Benin’s hoaxed endorsement of Ogbeide-Ihama, Mr. Tenebe later led his APC topnochers to visit the Oba Ewuare II, to present Ogbeide-Ihama, as APC’s flagbearer. The discerning Monarch was quoted as having asked for a certificate of return given to Ogbeide-Ihama, to no avail. Ordinarily, a winner hadn’t been announced by Abuja APC, that was still investigating the matter.
What I trust that Governor Okpebholo is conscious of is that Ize-Iyamu was one of the few, like Tenebe, who actually stood behind him to stop his deputy Idahosa, from upstaging him in the last governorship primaries and election that brought him to power.
If the governor could muster the support to retain a blundering Tenebe as Edo state APC chairman, in the face of avalanche opposition to his choice, because ge assisted him, why reject and work against his benefactor Ize-Iyamu and his senatorial seat, the same thing which Okpebholo got on a platter before abandoning it for the governoship?
It only bore down to the fact that a frustrated Governor Okpebholo just can’t help it when the Abuja overlords order him around. This is where I appeal to Mr. President to rescue the Governor and Edo State from the alleged harassment by Nyesom Wike and company.
It is the misadventure of Edo South senatorial imposition that has galvanized a groundswell of support of most Edo Southerns, that have over 65% of voters, for the Ize-Iyamu’s victory in the primaries.
Undermining this and the fact that Ize-Iyamu is an Area Pastor and caregiver for one of the largest churches in the state and the country, would also mean that Edo APC will take the bulk votes of Edo Christians for a ride, if Pastor Ize-Iyamu is denied the senatorial ticket he has won by landslide.