By Sebastine Ebhuomhan What goes around comes around, says an old aphorism. But in-between, things fall apart, first. Referring to the way imperialism and the arrival of unwelcomed Christian missionaries undermined African tribal system, Chinua Achebe, the great writer and orator in his classic, Things Fall Apart (1958) says, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Achebe relied on the opening stanza of William Butler Yeats’s poem, ‘The Second Coming,’ from which the title of Achebe’s novel is taken as an epigraph. Yeats’s work also figuratively refers to an uncontrollable chaos in an age of immorality and evil following the birth of the beast as against the morality and good the birth of Christ supposedly represents. Unlike the disfunction, degeneration, and disintegration Yeats and Achebe’s human societies confronted, some people in Edo State are confronting a different decay, disorganisation and decapitation. The hope of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s candidate in the Edo State governorship election of September 21st 2024, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, to govern the state has stumbled into disarray and fast eroding on accounts of ingratitude, failed promises, backstabbing, liabilities and sheer evils of the party’s elected incumbent governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, who trebles as state party leader and Ighodalo’s campaign council chairman. The centre can’t hold for the PDP, its leaders and members any longer. Today’s empirical evidence shows the All Progressives Congress (APC)‘s Senator Monday Okpebholo (and Honourable Dennis Idahosa) consolidating as the candidate to beat. For the Labour Party (LP) flagbearers, destructive internal and external forces have severely limited the impacts of Mr. Olumide Akpata and Prince Asamah Kadiri (SAN)’s organised campaign. Both APC and PDP have respectively bedded defected Obidients, the spine of LP, whose leaders are violently struggling for the party’s leftover. The forceful hijack of LP secretariat by youth is embarrassing. If not resolved amicably, Kenneth Imansuagbon’s court case could affect Akpata, whose campaign had earlier suffered the rejection of a placeholder. The PDP’s case is worse despite its huge chest of state funds and implementation of some last-minute pseudo-scientific rigging strategies like traders’ loans, free transport, free feeding, government palliatives, monthly stipends, judges’ appointment, fund disbursements, etc. The puppeteer, Governor Obaseki and his puppet, Ighodalo, have been doing everything to publicly make their campaign look popular, rousing, and accepted. However, the reality underlines that the coming of Obaseki and his faction into the PDP to escape the 2020 APC rainstorm has not only shredded the party’s umbrella but also destroyed its foundation, peace, cohesion, unity, and progress. Today, PDP members are fighting themselves; the leaders are decamping in droves. On May 9th 2024, Benin City witnessed uncontrollable chaos. Thousands of sons and daughters of Edo State protested against Obaseki, Ighodalo, Osarodion Ogie and Edo government’s underhand support for some rebellious and suspended enigies, whose court case against the Benin monarch, Uku Akpolokpolo Oba Ewuare II undoubtedly smacks of the voice of Jacob, hand of Esau. The protesters condemned the litigation as sacrilegious. They accused Obaseki and Ighodalo of fanning disrespect, undermining the Ogidigan, and seeking to tear Benin Traditional Council apart in order to weaken Ewuare’s authority with their planned parallel customary authorities. So, what are the kneejerk statements and interviews of Edo government, campaign organisation and party meant to achieve? No individual or group is dragging the revered name of Benin monarch into politics. As the Eminiminimini, Oba Ewuare II’s demands are socio-culturally and justifiably right. Relative to Thursday’s chaos is Obaseki and Ighodalo’s desire to covet the kingdom’s returned artefacts and funds under a dubious Edo Museum for West Africa Arts (EMOWAA) project. It is well-known that Obaseki engaged consultants without the awareness of Oba Ewuare. He began to build EMOWAA after throwing the plan between him and Oba Ewuare for the palace museum into the dustbin. When the monarch resisted his covetous move, his government encouraged rebellion amongst the chiefs to carve another way to claim the treasures. During the hide-and-seek, Obaseki used his executive powers to withhold the statutory allocations to the palace even as his government began to secretly hatch the division of the kingdom using the rebellion. Ighodalo’s public statement to study to know the artefacts he will send back to the palace all but revealed his greedy and sinister motive against Benin Traditional Council. The stage is now set for an epic decision by voters after Okpebholo’s promise to respect Oba Ewuare and give whatever belongs to the palace to the palace, if elected as governor. In line with Federal Government’s Gazette, all artefacts fall under the sole authority of the Benin monarch, which the stool has exercised for centuries. Before Thursday’s chaos, the APC and PDP constituted their respective state campaign council. The APC constituted a 524-member council under former governor Senator Adams Oshiomhole’s chairmanship with Senator Matthew Urhoghide as Director-General. The PDP constituted a 363-member campaign council under Obaseki’s chairmanship with Hon. Matthew Iduoriyekemwen as Director-General. Expectedly, big contentions and controversies trailed PDP’s announcement. After Obaseki, his government and faction spent years to denounce and abuse the Legacy Group, going as far as denying PDP’s largest caucus the opportunity to replace its impeached deputy governor, they disrespectfully drafted the group’s leader, PDP Deputy National Chairman, South-South, Chief Dan Orbih and his foot soldiers into the campaign council without the courtesy of informing him. Yet, the same Obaseki had flippantly alleged without evidence that “they collected money from other political parties.” Watching as the PDP council celebrated the falsehood of a non-existent settlement, Orbih asks this writer, “Can one person settle in the absence of the second person? I was not consulted. Legacy Group is not a party to this. This is a big lie from the pit of hell. Whoever orchestrated this propaganda is from the woods.” “So, Dan Orbih is important like this and they have been insulting me daily?” he further asks to reinforce the belief that some people are like birds. ‘You help a bird to fly and once it’s in
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