Former Edo State Governor who graduated to become the chairman of the country’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), ex-Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, always manufactures good copy for journalists.
The latest grandstanding release from the stable of Oshiomhole is that former Ekiti State Governor who doubled as the chairman of Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), Dr Kayode Fayemi, engineered his ignominious sacking as APC chairman.
It’s akin to Oshiomhole accusing Fayemi of plotting a coup against him in a democracy, and some other co-plotters were duly named in the personages of former Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun and former Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha.
The troika of alleged democratic coup-plotters are of course well-endowed enough to defend themselves with Amosun firing the first shot by dismissing Oshiomhole as the biggest disruptive threat to the affairs of the APC.
Oshiomhole’s charge against Fayemi flies in the face of reason because the former NPF chairman could not have been dictating to the other governors. Oshiomhole’s problem can only be understood in line with the old proverb that simply states: A bad workman always quarrels with his tools.
To lend serious context to the matter at hand, Oshiomhole who reigned as the APC chairman from 2018 to 2020 and is currently the senator for Edo North released his bombshell at the launch of a book, APC and Transition Politics by Salihu Lukman, a former national vice chairman (North-West) of the ruling party at the Shehu Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja on Tuesday, December 19.
From the article of revelation by Oshiomhole, Fayemi and the other governors were talking to him as if they were in a “military barracks” when his only drive was trying to enshrine party supremacy. Oshiomhole lamented that the then President Muhammadu Buhari did not lend a supporting hand until he was removed “illegally.”
The truth Oshiomhole does not want to confront or address is that his crash owes a lot to his abrasive nature in his turbulent relationship with the Progressives Governors’ Forum (PGF) and his debilitating war with his former disciple, Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State. Bringing Fayemi into the fray is at best a distraction.
Going back in time, Oshiomhole was fighting a war against everybody before his fall – from the ward level to the national level. For instance, the Edo State chapter of the APC made bold to declare then that Oshiomhole could no longer function as the party’s National Chairman because he had been suspended as a member of the party by his people in Ward 10 of Etsako West Local Government Area of Edo State.
While griping all he likes over Fayemi, Oshiomhole should understand that the former Ekiti State governor has since moved on and is unlike sundry sycophantic politicians currently speaking truth to power, no matter the odds.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
