Adams Oshiomhole, the erstwhile national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is definitely not a happy right now.
But his woes could be compounded by September if he does not achieve this one thing – get his ‘new’ ally, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, to win the Edo governorship election.
Mr Ize-Iyamu is the APC governorship candidate in the Edo election, while the Edo governor, Godwin Obaseki, is the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
A victory in the Edo election may just be the last thing Mr Oshiomhole could grab for now to save himself from complete humiliation, having lost out unexpectedly in a power-tussle in a party he successfully led to win the presidential election just last year.
Before the dissolution of Mr Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC), President Muhammadu Buhari handed down a huge humiliation to him and his faction by endorsing Victor Giadom as acting chairman of APC.
Mr Buhari said the law was on the side of Mr Giadom, a deputy national secretary in the dissolved NWC, who fought aggressively against Mr Oshiomhole’s leadership.
If Mr Obaseki wins re-election, it would be a double humiliation for Mr Oshiomhole, one that could lead to his quick retirement from politics.
Mr Oshiomhole helped Mr Obaseki to succeed him as a governor in 2016 against all the odds.
They fell apart, fought for the control of APC in Edo State, became arch-rivals, and then Mr Oshiomhole got suspended at his ward, apparently through Governor Obaseki’s prompting, which led to his eventual sack from office as the APC chairman.
Tortuous journey for Obaseki, Ize-Iyamu
Both Mr Obaseki and Mr Ize-Iyamu went through a tortuous journey to secure the governorship ticket of the two major political parties in Nigeria.
Both men even had to switch party, dramatically – Mr Ize-Iyamu moved from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to APC, while Mr Obaseki left APC to PDP.
In 2016, Mr Ize-Iyamu, a former secretary to the Edo State Government, had a bright chance to become the APC governorship candidate for that year’s election and, most likely, would have won the general election, but for Mr Oshiomhole who, as governor then, foisted Mr Obaseki on the party.
Several APC members and supporters, including Mr Oshiomhole’s allies, were rooting for Mr Ize-Iyamu in 2016, before Mr Oshiomhole turned the table against him, despite the fact that Mr Ize-Iyamu led his 2012 re-election campaign.
Mr Obaseki, Mr Oshiomhole’s favourite then, was widely considered as an ‘outsider’ in the APC and in the politics of Edo State since he was recruited into Mr Oshiomhole’s administration as a technocrat from the banking sector.
Mr Ize-Iyamu, out of frustration, defected from the APC to the PDP. He ran for governorship in the 2016 election under the PDP, but lost to Mr Obaseki.
While canvassing votes for Mr Obaseki during 2016 election, Mr Oshiomhole denounced Mr Ize-Iyamu as being unworthy of public office.
“It is true we found ourselves in the region of politics working together, but I never gave him government job,” Mr Oshiomhole said of Mr Ize-Iyamu in an undated video of a 2016 APC campaign rally in Benin, Edo State.
“I kept him (Ize-Iyamu) busy, let him be holding midnight meeting which he is used to. Ask him, since he was the DG (of my campaign organisation), why did I not appoint him into government?
“We kept him away, nothing near government circle, no access to public fund.”
Mr Oshiomhole, in the 10-minute video which is an excerpt from Channels TV’s live coverage of the rally, said Mr Ize-Iyamu was a “GM of one wuru-wuru” company and accused him of ruining the administration of Lucky Igbinedion in Edo State.
Mr Oshiomhole said the likes of Mr Ize-Iyamu would never be allowed to return to the government of Edo State.
In the other hand, Mr Oshiomhole in the video praised Mr Obaseki as one who used his “brain” and “creativity” to work for the good of the state and the people. He even raised a song that said Mr Obaseki was “a winner and not a loser”.
Now, this is 2020 and the political game has completely changed for the trio of Oshiomhole, Obaseki, and Ize-Iyamu. There has been a reversal of roles.
Mr Obaseki, who was once a darling, has become Mr Oshiomhole’s worst political enemy. They have fought a protracted political battle that sapped the strength from the Edo governor. He was eventually disqualified, most likely through Mr Oshiomhole’s prompting, from contesting in the APC governorship primary, thereby forcing him to defect to the PDP.
Mr Obaseki, already exhausted after his battle with Mr Oshiomhole and the APC, entered his new party, the PDP, only for him to encounter another challenge – the uncertainty about him getting the PDP governorship ticket – with some of the aspirants who were already in the party before him vowing that they would not step down for him.
The PDP leadership in Abuja shifted the Edo governorship primary to allow room for Mr Obaseki to negotiate his way through.
During this period, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, who initially backed Mr Obaseki’s defection to PDP, angrily pulled out of the process, accused other PDP leaders of trying to blackmail him because of Mr Obaseki. He labelled the unnamed PDP leaders as “tax collectors”.
Mr Wike said he was no longer interested in getting the Edo governor to secure the PDP ticket for his re-election.
Some people have interpreted Mr Wike’s ‘tax collectors’ comment to mean that the Edo governor must have been made to pay a huge amount of money to join PDP and also to get the party ticket.
Mr Obaseki’s spokesperson, Crusoe Osagie, however, told PREMIUM TIMES that the governor did not pay any money to anybody in PDP.
Just like the Oshiomhole-Ize-Iyamu relationship, the PDP had in the past attacked Mr Obaseki’s educational certificates as being fake.
“I have had Oshiomhole refer to him as a technocrat and the candidate himself has described himself as one.
“Here with me is the school certificate he used to gain admission to the University of Ibadan. In this result, he did not pass Economics, yet he calls himself head of economic team. In the same certificate, he made P7 in English and failed Mathematics,” Dan Orbih, the then chairman of PDP in Edo State, said of Mr Obaseki in August 2016, during the governorship election.
“He claimed he entered the university the year he left secondary school. How could he have gained admission with such result? The result was not even good enough for any form of preliminary studies.
“This can only mean that Obaseki forged the certificates to gain admission. It is obvious that the man has no academic qualifications as he had only three credits,” Mr Orbih said.
Very interestingly, the APC, which defended Mr Obaseki’s certificates in 2016, latter deployed the same controversy to disqualify him in 2020, and the PDP, which started the controversy, has not only welcomed Mr Obaseki into the party, but has made him their governorship candidate for the September election.
Their final remarks?
What Mr Oshiomhole said when Mr Ize-Iyamu returned to APC is both interesting and instructive.
“If you remember, Pastor Ize-Iyamu was my DG (director-general of my campaign organisation) in 2012, (my) second term,” Mr Oshiomhole proudly said in December 2019 after a rally to welcome Mr Ize-Iyamu back to APC.
“I won in all the 18 local government areas, I won all the wards in Edo South. I scored 74.6 per cent in the total votes cast. In 2016, the man left us and stood against us, we only managed to defeat him with about 50,000 votes.
“So, if he is bringing on board as he has done, that his goodwill, his energy, his resourcefulness, and his own electoral base to join the APC, I am much more confident now about APC continuous hold on the governance of this state than ever before,” Mr Oshiomhole said.
On the part of the PDP, the last of the three governorship aspirants to step down for Mr Obaseki was Kenneth Imasuagbon, a legal practitioner who said he used the past 16 years to work on his ambition to “serve” the Edo people.
Mr Imasuagbon initially rebuffed all entreaties to withdraw from the race, saying, and rightly so, that it was because of Mr Obaseki that he left APC to PDP.
“If there is anyone who should step down for the other, it is Obaseki,” Mr Imasuagbon said a few days to the PDP primary.
Mr Imasuagbon eventually stepped down at the venue of the primary, after all.
And here is what he said of Mr Obaseki: “I saw in Godwin Obaseki a man who stood tall to fight godfatherism. I am a victim of godfather. Obaseki is a performing governor, he has worked hard for the state, he was distracted by the godfathers while he was in APC.”
The advantages, chances, and lessons to be learnt
The sacking of Mr Oshiomhole as APC chairman has been a big boost for Mr Obaseki and his supporters, but that too could propel Mr Oshiomhole to fight with all his might and with everything he could possibly deploy to his advantage in the election.
Yes, incumbency factor could work for Mr Obaseki, the same way Mr Obaseki and Mr Ize-Iyamu may be hoping on ‘federal might’ – the unethical practice of using the military, police and other federal agencies to influence election outcome.
But there may be a snag in the ‘federal might’ working for Mr Oshiomhole.
“The stake has reduced for APC (in the Edo election), it is now an ego battle for Oshiomhole,” a PDP official in another state told PREMIUM TIMES.
“Before now, it would have been like, ‘Look, we can’t allow the home state of the national chairman to be taken over by the opposition, it would send a wrong signal’.
“Mr Oshiomhole is a former chairman of the party. There are people who won’t pick Oshiomhole’s calls now. The inspector general of police cannot pick Oshiomhole’s calls today as he used to pick before. He was duty-bound to pick the call of the national chairman on a first ring because the guy could complain to the president,” the PDP official said.
The biggest factor, perhaps, for Mr Oshiomhole and the APC in the Edo election is Mr Ize-Iyamu who is an experienced politician, with a strong connection with voters across party lines.
This could probably explain why Mr Oshiomhole ate back his words and conceded to backing Mr Ize-Iyamu for the election, for the ‘last fight’ against Mr Obaseki.
It is difficult, for now, to predict who between Mr Obaseki and Mr Ize-Iyamu would win the Edo election, especially as politicians from outside would likely use the state as an experiment desk to test-run their preparedness for 2023 general elections.
One lesson from the APC crisis and the build-up to the Edo governorship election is that there is no difference between APC and PDP and that political parties themselves remain one of the biggest threats to Nigeria’s democracy.
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