Popular Edo politician with big grammar, Hon Patrick Obahiagbon, in this interview by LASISI OLAGUNJU, speaks on the outcome of last Saturday’s governorship election in Edo State and, among other issues including dissecting the character of each of the gladiators in that contest.
You campaigned vigorously for Mr Monday Okpebholo, the APC candidate in the last governorship election in your state. What really recommended him to you?
You are damn right to describe my involvement in the Edo Governorship Election campaigns as vigorous and it had to be so to agglutinate efforts in the pulverization, macadamization and emasculation of a seating Governor Obaseki that had morphed and atrabiliously so, into a political gorgon medusa of the bluest dyle. I am quite elated at the coruscating victory of the APC and our governorship candidate who emblematized himself as the political zeitgeist of the political campaign. His victory has again incorporated Edo State into the ideological federal matrix trajectory. His victory has also demonstrated quod erat demonstrandum that connecting more with the political locals has a potent utilitarian value than an immersion in vacuous technocratic gobbledygook.
What would you say of the candidates of the PDP and the Labour Party? Did you have any relationship with them?
The Labour Party’s candidate ran an ebullient political campaign and came to the table with a considerable verve of media visibility. He must have been encouraged inter alia with the evanescence of the Peter Obi movement in Edo State that some of us insisted at that time, was a political bubble and an ignis fatuus or a will-o-the-wisp if you like. I sincerely wish him well in his future political engagements. The candidate of the PDP had the Obaseki albatross to contend with abinitio and his tireless efforts to pierce through the monstrous veil of the Obaseki political albatross was like contending with the twelve labours of Hercules which was simply penelopic. I of course have a mutually respectable rapport with both of them.
Some people see the election as a test of will and strength between two godfathers — Godwin Obaseki and Adams Oshiomhole. What is your own reading of that contest? How would you describe the two gentlemen?
Let me asseverate prestissimo that there is really nothing fundamentally erroneous about the role of a godfather in any political process provided that the person playing that role do not replace the small letter g with the capital letter G as was the case with Obaseki. Was the election a test of will and strength between the two godfathers? Whereas Comrade Oshiomhole’s administration as governor of Edo state was humongously impactful and salubrious in all pigmentations, that of Obaseki was marked and steeped in unavoidable belligerency, bellicosity and pugnacity and that is to put it very mildly. I dare say that there’s really no basis for comparison between the two of them. Obaseki was Comrade Oshiomhole’s protege who feigned loyalty until he became a political revisionist and renegade. There would have been no Obaseki politically without Comrade Oshiomhole.
Some CSOs have described the election as flawed and marred with irregularities. Do you believe the election was truly free and fair?
The Edo Governorship Election was free and fair for the entire world to see and was held in substantial compliance with all the relevant extant laws and regulations. I have no doubt that the aforesaid election would pass the crucible of any judicial intervention.
What advice would you give the PDP candidate who has been saying that he was rigged out of victory?
My simple advice to him is to immediately congratulate the APC Governor-Elect as already declared and affirmed by INEC. That’s the irreducible minimum expected of him no matter what his reservations may be. His reservations that may eventuate into a judicial peregrination are not mutually incompatible with his congratulating the Governor-Elect as it’s the practice in advanced democracies.
What suggestions will you give the governor-elect on how to run a successful government?
My first advice to our Governor-Elect is to always seek the face of God in all his thoughts, words and actions. He should passionately and fearlessly work for the people of Edo State. One of his strong points was his trademark humility. I strongly advise him that this is the time he even needs a large dose of that humility. I am also looking forward to his putting in place a very strong cabinet made up of solid and distinguished men and women of integrity. He needs a very solid cabinet at this point in time divorced completely of the masturbation of political egos. I fervently pray that God and the Cosmic Masters continue to grant him the wisdom and guide him in navigating through potentially centrifugal and conflictual megalomaniacal political interests which are already identifiable by critical and gifted minds. May God help and guide him. Amen.
The hunger in the land is very bad. How have you been coping with it, sir?
They are the pro tempore pains of the birth pangs arising from childbirth and Insha Allah, there would be light at the terminus ad quem of the tunnel.
Finally, what has Igodomigodo been doing to keep body and soul together since you left the House of Representatives years ago?
The lgodomigodo has been studiously fixing his gaze at the East from whence commeth the greater Light.
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