DELTA 2015: PDP ERROR IN EDO STATE AND THE EMERGENCE OF OSHOMOLE – A LESSON FOR DELTA STATE

The talk about some PDP leaders working behind the scene to promote the candidature of the opposition party in Delta State, though doubtful is worth looking at. Such rumours only indicate a lack of understanding of lessons from political history. A few years ago the pattern being talked about occurred in Edo State. Let’s try to succinctly recall that episode.

Those who are very familiar with the politics of Edo State PDP and the emergence of Prof. Osunbor as the party’s governorship candidate know that he was handed the party’s governorship ticket in 2007 by President Olusegun Obasanjo, this did not sit well with Chief Tony Anenih who supported Odion Ugbesia who looked good to beat Osunbor at the party primary. While in office Osumbor did not help matters.

The ouster of Osunbor by the Tribunal and Appellate Court marked, in the main, a denouement of despicable irritating Machiavellian stratagem, insidious disloyalty and wanton disdain for party discipline that befell the PDP in Edo State who brought down a duly elected Governor of its party.   The truth is that the tragedy, which befell the man whose tenure was suddenly terminated by the Court of Appeal on November 12, 2008 to pave the way for the takeover of the reins of governance by Adams Aliu Oshiomhole of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), also befell all party members and leaders of PDP extraction following ACN victory.

Chief Anenih had aligned with Governor Oshiomhole and their relationship became very close.  Anenih at one point described Oshiomhole as his son until the relationship became sour less than one year on, when Anenih publicly described the ACN as air conditioner without compressor at a rally in Ewohimi and that he wants the people of Nigeria to know that Oshiomhiole does not practice what he preaches.

The issue that came to the fore and has engaged the attention of many discerning watchers of Edo Politics was the proxy war and high-wire manipulations and posturing that rocked and scuttled Professor Oserheimen Osunbor’s governorship.

Naively PDP members and leaders played the game of treachery to undermine its own victory. PDP in Edo State in 2008 was deeply engrossed in a political macabre dance by pandering to the attraction of filthy lucre and narcissism, at the end the party lost its victory to ACN. Most of those who orchestrated the fall of PDP became the victims of Oshomole’s ascendency to power. Barrister Osaze Ize-Iyamu, SSG under Igbenedion was a major casualty. 

Today, there is festering rumour that some people are once again naively contemplating and pandering with the idea of working with the opposition to stall PDP victory. In contemplating so, they should look with hindsight at what happened in Edo State in 2008 and how PDP used itself to throw away victory, at the end every leader and members of the party regretted that awful error of political decision.