Osadebe Avenue And Its Rottweilers, By Prince Kassim Afegbua 

I often try as much as possible to refrain from joining issues with street urchins; usually motivated by their beggarly orientation as they exhibit their rottweiler skills as attack dogs to an inchoate system of imbecilic hangers-on, and are on a perpetual social media tirade. My first instinct is to try to psychoanalyse them, to gain an understanding of their motive and mission which is often seen in the direction of their stomachs!! Unfortunately, this rambunctious tyke of a felon, who is daily watered by the saliva of incontinence, has refused to grow. He keeps murdering simple syntax as he languidly stumbles on words; like a drunk experiencing effusions in a state of stupor, delivering incoherent monologues; to impress the hollowness that permeates the fractured walls of Osadebe Avenue.

Please take this to your paymaster.  Godwin Obaseki may have unmeritedly become the Governor today, but I was his superior when I served under his benefactor in 2012-2016. As a Commissioner before we exited, I openly showed my dissonance to his dubious ambition. Where pretentiousness and dubiety were freely advertised by a man who has repeatedly confirmed the notion that he is indeed an ingrate, I wasn’t swayed. He was an ingrate, he is an ingrate, he will remain an ingrate till eternity, no matter how he tries to pretentiously cloak his behavioural exhibitions.

I am only sympathising with his army of ingrates who have become social media urchins, with saliva dripping from their rotten mouths to spit out venom against anyone who contradicts their belief system. A Governor that desires respect must earn it  by his behaviour, character and content; and not by a show of empty bravado that is often associated with leaders who use brute force to hide their inferiority complex. As a member of APC, Governor Obaseki was a catastrophe!!!! As a member of PDP, he has become more catastrophic than ever before. It is therefore not an accident of history or a twist in his trajectory that he is described with the same lexis and structure in both parties. It could only be an insipid behaviour that flows from his blood stream, than any other rationalisation to the contrary. So, when a vendable lickspittle of Osayiogie’s ilk is drooling all over the social media in defence of ingratitude, it hurts the very soul of morality. In 2024, Obaseki will irrevocably and unassailably quit Osadebe Avenue, and another Edo mind will occupy that office. Maybe when the countdown begins, he might begin the process of coming to terms with the huge damage he has done to the psyche of Edo young minds who have been reduced to paupers by a deliberate design to keep them in the cage like rottweilers. As attack dogs, decency is thrown to the wind, because the more ridiculous noise they make, the better the attention they are accorded by their shepherd. No matter what revisionists would write, Governor Obaseki is a thoroughly wicked soul; a complete sadist, an unforgiving  mind that is petulantly sulky, that is generous with ingratitude and frugal with benevolence. Both APC and PDP power aphrodisiac cannot be wrong in their verdict about the Governor and his emanations. Their dissonance were borne out of experiencing the Obaseki product; like akara full of pebbles and largely unedible.

As an ingrate, he may not have acknowledged the contributions of Dan Orbih and members of the PDP legacy, but the verdict of history cannot be altered by revisionists or chroniclers of invidious themes. Those who exhibit such character indices, have a way of turning a blind eye to the benevolence of their benefactors. You met legacy officers and members of the PDP on ground, they clothed your nakedness, gave you an umbrella to.prevent APC’s acidic rain from tormenting you, and graciously ushered you into their comfortable collective shelter. Habits can never be hidden for long. They must show; in no time. As soon as Obaseki won his re-election, as a man who claimed he was fighting godfathers, he suddenly wanted to control the entire power apparatchik of pdp across all the local governments in the state. He told his spectators that anyone who was not ready to kowtow to his phlegmatic leadership, would be showed the exit door. Go back to the videos of Dan Orbih during the campaigns, and you will see that the turn of events after the election could only have been an ingrate’s handiwork. Yet, some overbloated fools, masquerading around the corridors of social media, would continue to preach Obaseki to us. What impudence!!!

On the adhoc delegates issue, the court has made a pronouncement and there is nothing anybody can do about it. If Obaseki’s intentions were altruistic, by now, those who worked sleeplessly to ensure his victory, would have become shining examples of his political success. I am still wondering why it is always convenient for some people to pay gratitude with ingratitude; destroying the very fabric that ought to oil benevolence and gratefulness, and promoting depravity to a dizzying height, all in the name of trying to enforce a force majeure on those who are bold to look them in the face. A leadership that is schooled in those inelegant power indices would end up watering political hate, bad-blood, quarelsomeness, ingratitude, dubiety, artificial insemination, malevolence and thalidomide. These are some of the ingredients that gave birth to Governor Obaseki’s social media urchins, jostling for space to please their paymaster. They behave like perpetual dipsomaniacs; dithering in thoughts and uncoordinated in outlook with bombastic rhetoric. When you sit near them, you perceive their odourful mouths, reeking of alcohol and left-over food.

Realizing that he’s not in control of the structure, he tries to impose his whims, using his habitual force to railroad the process. Those who came from Abuja national office of the PDP threw the provisions of the Electoral Act to the wind, found comfort in the inner pantheons of Osadebe House, concocted a list, and rushed back to Abuja. Those who understood the process, went to the field under the supervision and monitoring of the electoral umpire, got delegates elected and the outcome duly certified by INEC before the list was submitted to the party’s headquarters. It was not surprising therefore that the court gave such a verdict.

Those who are close to Governor Obaseki must tarry awhile to school him in the act and art of benevolence. It doesn’t diminish the status of men. It helps to build a society of disciplined minds with gratitude to God and man. The PDP, no matter the subterranean influences of its national leadership, is still largely an organic party that functionally applies its constitution in dealing with situations. When a Governor takes over the functions of the party; governance and politics, he becomes a Judge in his own case. This is why the message must be clear to all and sundry, that as Governor, Obaseki needs people to make his leadership wholesome. Behaving like a conquistador all the time is unbecoming,  is a bad character index and is giving Edo State a bad image in the larger society. I will come your way again.