Former governor of Edo State, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, has said that incumbent governor Godwin Obaseki was a failure as the governor of Edo State, and that there was nothing about this performance in his 8 years in office that indicated that Edo people would vote for the person that he endorsed as the next governor of the state.
Oshiomhole said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Sunday, where he said that Obaseki had burned his bridges as he had reportedly fought with the people who used to back him, which resulted in him becoming a “lonely man” in politics.
The Senator said, “God knows that Obaseki misgoverned the state, he defrauded the people, he jailed innocent women, he did a lot of terrible things that any man who has the fear of God will not do to his own people, and he’s proud to say ‘I will crush, I will crush’. Every other minute, he will say ‘I am the Chief Security Officer.’ In the process, he forgot that these powers belong to the people, the sovereignty belongs to the people. They delegate you, they entrust you, believing that you will do good to them.
“Instead, you used the power to threaten, you made promises you never kept, so there was nothing. And even the royal father, he was fighting him. He fought everybody, whether you looked for his trouble, didn’t look for his trouble, for Obaseki, crushing people was [for] himself a way of life. So, we are very happy now that we have consigned him to the dustbin of political history.
“As a person, he is my friend, but as governor, he was a failure,” he added.
Oshiomhole went on to say, “That we defeated Obaseki and Asue Ighodalo should be quite predictable. There was nothing either in Obaseki performance nor Asue’s credentials that would have made them win the elections, and I said that before to this channel that Asue is not electable. Now what are the facts? Obaseki is like the proverbial blind man who in 2016, he rode on my back as an outgoing governor, we crossed the river, and he didn’t allow his leg to touch the water, and so, he didn’t understand what it took to become a governor.
“In 2020, again, there were internal crisis in the APC, Obaseki again had the backing of some elements within the APC, and of course, the very Wike that he’s demonising now, Governor Wike, as he then was, left Port-Harcourt to Benin, and the REC they were protesting against, that same REC was in Benin. Again, Obaseki rode on the back of Wike and elements and what became known as PDP Legacy Group, together with some of the elements in APC. They took him to cross the river for the second time without his leg touching water. And so, twice, he was being described as the iron man.
“And so this time around, he has burned all the cables, he has divided the PDP into two, the legacy PDP left him, Wike left him, I left him, his deputy left him, and so he was now a lonely man. And now, he had to cross the river using his own strength, he just found that in the process he got stuck inside the river, which he himself predicted that once he loses the election, he said the election was a do or die. Now Edo people have done it, and he is dead.”
Addressing criticisms from election observers who questioned the fairness of the Edo gubernatorial election, Oshiomhole dismissed their claims, saying, “An observer’s perception, as they say, what is apparent may not be real in the real world. That something appears apparent doesn’t mean it is real. An observer is no more than the name suggests- an observer, and his view cannot be superior, they cannot be damning.
“We have 4,519 polling units across the length and breadth of Edo State. These observers, how many were they? How many units did they observe for them to be more credible than INEC that was present in every election?”
He then, concerning governor-elect Monday Okpebholo, said, “I’m very proud to support Monday Okpebholo, because I believe we don’t need arrogant people in government. It’s not like a private company.”
Oshiomhole was then questioned as to why Okpebholo had not shown a strong media presence like his opponents to speak to Nigerians, to which he responded, “Only the voters in Edo State, and not you, can decide which kind of person they want as a governor. If they prefer even a deaf person, who are you, with all due respect, to sit in Lagos and say no, Edo people are wrong?”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi