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Obaseki: The Buhari FulaniĀ  In Him

By Harry White
No doubt, as expected, Governor Godwin Obaseki would betray the good people of Edo State as he’s always done. He is a serial betrayer and he is not going to stop soon. Comrade Oshiomhole brought the public shy man with no good looks dimwit from nowhere and made him the head of his economic team. And against all odds, even with a very loyal deputy, he propelled Obaseki to replace him in 2016 after a fiercely battled primaries against Hon. Odubu, and then against Pastor Izi-Iyamu of the PDP during the gubernatorial election proper. He won.
The first thing Governor Obaseki did was to relegate both the party and Comrade Oshiomhole who brought him to power to rock bottom in the party. He went on propaganda spree “I don’t want to share the Edo State money with APC leaders, that’s why they are fighting me.” Meanwhile, no one could see what he was doing with the money. infrastructures were decaying and there were no leap from where Oshiomhole handed over to him because the basis for the campaign was continuity. Oshiomhole had cut his teeth into the infrastructural development of the state and that momentum needed to be sustained, as a matter of fact.
After spending the whole of his four year tenure doing nothing meaningful that people could point their fingers at, he betrayed Oshiomhole by orchestrating his unexpected removal from the office of the National Chairman of APC through a kangaroo ward suspension.
He left APC afterwards and joined PDP. The unsuspecting members PDP wanted to teach Oshiomhole a lesson or two for making them to be in the opposition for over 11 years. They rallied round Obaseki to win. However, Oshiomhole was a good political actor who played the leader of the party well by knowing how to oil the machines of his party. Almost everyone in the party enjoyed down to the grassroots and visible infrastructural developments were recorded.
After winning the gubernatorial election in 2020, Obaseki started, as was unexpected by PDP members, fighting for structures of the party leaving all campaign promises in the 192 wards he visited unattended. It was shocking for the party leaders, they felt betrayed. He made all his appointments without consultations with the legacy PDP members while asking for the excos that brought him to power to be dissolved in his favour so he can replace them with the new entrants that came with him. The party members resisted, decided to bluff him of and his notoriety of fighting his benefactors. They told him without mincing words that he should keep his appointments while they keep their structures. He blamed his predicament in the party on Chief Dan Orbih, the South South Vice Chairman of PDP. This blame game is no longer selling as all reasonable people in the state has come to know him as an ingrate who constantly fight his benefactors. Even when the leadership of the party at the national level waded into the situation, he is still going round through his foot soldiers to hatch his illegal harmonization.
Amid these internal wrangling withing PDP, where he is supposed to be one of the leaders, he has refused to sign the Anti-Grazing Bill into law and this has piqued him against the people of Edo State who now see him for who he is – a version of Buhari in the South.
Governor Godwin Obaseki was among the South South governors who took part in the Asaba Declaration where Anti-Grazing was adopted by all making him a signatory to that united agreement. However, while others of his compatriots have since signed this bill into law, including Governor Akeredolu of APC, Obaseki has since refused because his concentration has always been his dirty fight against PDP in which he has since been loosing his credibility as a person. And recently, he called for a Town Hall Meeting and openly renegated on the position of the Asaba meeting where it was declared that member states of the South South were all going to sign the bill into law. And a subsequent meeting was held after that where the governors of the region agreed to float a joint security outfit to curb all types of criminalities, including the open grazing.
Ā Well, public commentators had reservations about Governor Godwin Obaseki on the South South Governor’s joint agreement because of his history of betrayals. And during the Town Hall Meeting recently held in Benin, he was true to their prophesies. He subtly denounced the idea by using the excuse of the law not being an enforceable one if signed. Days later, he was seen with Buhari asking for funds for the creation of ranches in the state. Ranches for who and by who? Some of Edo State citizens were caught of guard but those who know him and his sinister actions were not surprised. He has not, as thousands of commentators wrote on several social platforms, shown interest in the welfare of the people of the state even when kidnappers are overruning the state. He does not pay or has never equipped local vigilantes around the state who help complement the official security agents meanwhile, he pockets well over 700 million Naira monthly as security votes.
Now, with his meeting with Buhari, which some commentators reasoned was meant to open spaces for him to go back to APC now that the heat from PDP at all levels is getting on him, especially from the national, the issue of Anti-Grazing Law being passed in Edo State is as good as dead.
This is exactly how Obaseki operates, and goodbye.

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