If barbarism is the absence of culture and civilization, or extreme cruelty or brutality, then, this is the calamity that has befallen the people of Edo today politically.
By Igbotako Nowinta
It is very sad that the phantom freaks who parade themselves as political godfathers, godsons, and retired godsons/children have substituted meaningful governance for cant, caprice and frivolities; and electoral democracy with the most disdain, hatred and indecency. These freaks have succeeded to flare the flames of poverty, backwardness, violence and intolerance in Edo State, instead of fighting it. What they have done and what we are seeing them doing is simply to trample upon the electorate, whether they like it or not; to continue to reduce the business of governance to impunity, incompetence and ridicule. Never before have the sensibilities of the electorate been taken for granted, and the affairs of Edo State reduced to a conspiracy, an affair ‘between trusted allies,’ like the way these intolerable and inconsiderate political bad losers, monuments of disgrace and insensitive freaks are carrying on. What prompted the revered Benin Monarch, His Royal Majesty, Oba Ewuare ll, to call for an emergency meeting in his palace recently, where he passionately sued for peace, caution and maturity between the leaders of the dominant political parties fielding candidates for the September 19, 2020, Edo State Governorship Election? It was because the enigmatic, proactive, progressive and peace loving Oba Ewuare ll, was genuinely alarmed and pissed off, seeing his domain – a super bastion of civilization and culture being desecrated daily in the name of unbridled pursuits of political power and supremacy.
As the 2020 Edo State Governorship Election draws closer by the day, two eternal historical factors readily come to my mind.
Firstly, l remember the legendary Patrick Henry who decided to create a path for himself during the struggle for independence in the colony of Virginia in the United States.
Secondary, the tyrannical King John of Great Britain comes to my mind, whose demonic leadership parochialism led to the birth of the historic Magna Carta.
Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was a self-made man who eventually became a lawyer and statesman in the then British colony of Virginia in America.
In March 1775, during the Second Virginia Convention, many of the delegates were hesitating on the path to take regarding the winds of independence that was blowing like wild fire in all the British colonies in America.
As the debates reached a feverish crescendo, Patrick Henry was prompted to make a speech that catapulted his name into eternal reckoning when he said:” ls life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death”. Some of us must have read about Magna Carta during our days in the University or must have come across the term in the course of private study.
Magna Carta simply means ‘Great Charter,” it was a peace treaty that came into force on June 15,1215, when King John was forced to abandon his reckless taxation, dictatorial powers over the Church, Scotland and Ireland, when his barons gave him the option of a civil war.
Magna Carta ended absolute barbarism in governance for the first time in England, and led to the democratic demands during the French and America revolutions.
If barbarism is the absence of culture and civilization, or extreme cruelty or brutality, then, this is the calamity that has befallen the people of Edo today politically.
It is very sad that the phantom freaks who parade themselves as political godfathers, godsons, and retired godsons/children have substituted meaningful governance for cant, caprice and frivolities; and electoral democracy with the most disdain, hatred and indecency.
These freaks have succeeded to flare the flames of poverty, backwardness, violence and intolerance in Edo State, instead of fighting it. What they have done and what we are seeing them doing is simply to trample upon the electorate, whether they like it or not; to continue to reduce the business of governance to impunity, incompetence and ridicule.
Never before have the sensibilities of the electorate been taken for granted, and the affairs of Edo State reduced to a conspiracy, an affair ‘between trusted allies,’ like the way these intolerable and inconsiderate political bad losers, monuments of disgrace and insensitive freaks are carrying on.
What prompted the revered Benin Monarch, His Royal Majesty, Oba Ewuare ll, to call for an emergency meeting in his palace recently, where he passionately sued for peace, caution and maturity between the leaders of the dominant political parties fielding candidates for the September 19, 2020, Edo State Governorship Election?
It was because the enigmatic, proactive, progressive and peace loving Oba Ewuare ll, was genuinely alarmed and pissed off, seeing his domain – a super bastion of civilization and culture being desecrated daily in the name of unbridled pursuits of political power and supremacy.
Divergence of views is a healthy component of democracy. But this is not what has been taking place within the dominant political parties in Edo State.
What do we tag these dramatis personae who recklessly rocked the same vehicle of politics four years ago; who vomited unprintable missiles against each other; who have now turned full circle, becoming embittered enemies, because of parochialism, material accumulation and self-glorification? Phantom freaks of course.
This game of barbarism and phantom freaks being dramatized in Edo State, is most odious; a devaluation of civility, an abomination to the international best practices of democratic system, a disaster to common sense; must not be allowed to last long, never to resurface during the next Governorship Election.
This present lamentable chain must be broken down. Must concerned, visionary, cerebral and missionary driven Edo people resign to this terrible suffocating fate forever, no, if King John could be forced to recant, to retreat against his parochial agenda in Great Britain in 1215, which led to the enactment of the Magna Carta, a third force could be initiated, mobilized and financed, even, within the existing dominant political parties, to stand to counter this intimidating continuous dominance by these nauseating phantom freaks?
What is left of the democratic hopes and psyche of progressive Edo voters is being shattered, while their dream of a just, equitable and habitable society has turned into a mirage.
The most painful aspect of this development is the fact that, those who would have made the difference drastically; those who would have genuinely looked at the masses have been swept under the carpet, and their names left to rot in the dust bins of neglect; sacrificed on the altar of political barbarism.
I think the people of Edo State are paying for years of complacency in the face of these rascalities, abuses and misnormals being heaped on them. When will Edo State come out of the present dark times, and rejoin the league of the civilized States in Nigeria?
Next time around our brightest and the best must be mobilized to deploy their unbounded energies to the task of development, democracy and progress; to reanimate patriotic passions for our society.
What is democracy when universal principles of electoral process have been dumped inside the gutter of pre-meditated rigging, absolute disregard for the electorate and conscienceless monetization of voting?
The way electoral contest has been conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and the manner the judiciary is being dragged in, to justify the biblical hairy ‘hand of Esau,’ since the last presidential election in Nigeria, the votes of the largest number of the people of Edo State might not speak at last.
I see atavistic cold blooded political vendetta carrying the day. In 2016, Adams Oshiomhole and Godwin Obaseki and company were cruising in the same political boat within the All Progressives Congress, (APC), same for Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, Dan Orbih, former Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and their crowd.
Today, the plane of political struggle absolutely devoid of any form of ideological basis or decency has summersaulted. Now, Adams Oshiomhole, Osagie Ize-Iyamu and company are flying together in the same plane within APC, while Dan Orbih, Godwin Obaseki and cohorts are in the another PDP camp, shows the level of bare faced desperation and political barbarism being discharged to the people of Edo State.
Given my antecedents, l am taking the honorable path of the unforgettable Patrick Henry; my conscience cannot condone the present mess, in spite of the course others are taking today, seeing individuals changing political parties like their panties.
In 2012, after ex-Governor Adams Oshiomhole had completely conquered the godfathers, l wrote a Book- ‘Adams Oshiomhole: Conqueror of the godfathers’ to celebrate his seeming monumental conquest.
But, less than four years later, Oshiomhole became a turncoat and threw Godwin Obaseki on everybody, l said no and did an article – ‘Edo 2016: Return of the godfather’, which made me an instant enemy of the likes of Kashim Afegbua, then Commissioner for Information, under Oshiomhole. Now, what do we have, ambitions of individuals mightier than the people they pretend to represent?
Is it a chameleonic character known as Dan Orbih, who is now the Chairman of Godwin Obaseki’s 2020 Campaign Committee, and others that space constraint here will not allow me to mention their names?
l chose to disagree, to be blindfolded when politicking has turned into a war of attrition, instead of a process of displaying the highest ideologically inclined manifestoes.
What is happening is repulsive and debasing, how can a handful of privileged individuals continue to turn the entire party faithful within the two dominant political parties into pawnish objects to be manipulated deliberately?
If Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu allegedly won the Edo State gubernatorial election in 2016, as it was widely speculated then in many quarters, and the results were allegedly upturned by systemic magicians, to favor a most unaccommodating political upstart, called Godwin Obaseki, which made him the current Governor and an ingrate for that matter, it is glaringly and calculatively most certain, that the ‘compensational divine supreme forces’ and the ‘law of the thick political jungle’ in this state, might click together, and tilt in the direction and favor of the former gallant loser – the man now being identified with the cassock.
In spite of the above analysis, and given the fact that these political freaks have gone ballistics in their concerted schemes, l sincerely urge the voters in Edo State to come out enmasse to vote for their preferred choice; and stand up stoically to defend their votes on September 19th, 2020.
Ultimately, l am waiting patiently for the day, when the necessary amendments to our political laws will be altered forever, to forbid decamping of politicians from a particular party at will.
Nowinta wrote Where We Are: A call for democratic revolution In Nigeria
