Comrade Oshiomhole’s loose truck

THE following is from the Cooks Hill Counselling blog: “Why ‘think before you speak’? Because while most of us are pretty careless with the words we choose, words are just so powerful. They can be helpful or hurtful, and can have a direct influence on the outcome of a situation, creating a positive or negative reaction in our world.”

Some people apparently talk first, then think later, if they ever do think. Their mouth is their pilot. Kneeling before the Oba of Benin last Sunday, shortly after the victory of the APC at the Edo State governorship election, former NLC president and senator representing Edo North in the National Assembly, Adams Oshiomhole, crafted this cant: “Your Royal Majesty, I remain on my knees to apologise for my poor judgment, as I stubbornly supported a man against your clear advice. I wrongly believed that as a Benin man, he would uphold our tradition, customs, and respect for our heritage, which I now realise was a mistake.”

Before the whole world, Oshiomhole was asking the Oba of Benin to confirm his opposition to a governor in a country where a governor can remove any traditional ruler “and sleep soundly afterwards,” like a gangster up North once quipped. He was on his knees seeking to bring the throne to its knees. In his mental disease, Oshiomhole did not realise that he was asking for a Certificate of Antagonism against a sitting governor. Thankfully, the oba shunned the poisonous bait, speaking no ill of Obaseki. And his rebuke was direct, his angst palpable: “When you brought Obaseki to me, I did not say anything… I must correct your statement — I never said anything against Obaseki.”

Even if the oba had said such a thing, did Oshiomhole actually expect him to publicly admit that he did, and then open himself up to charges of partisanship that a lifetime of rebuttals cannot wash away? Is it every cloth you spread under the sun? And is that how they talk to royal majesties where Oshiomhole comes from? As a relation of the Yoruba, the oba knows that an elder must only be quick to see, not to speak. He knows that down the ages, words had stripped many kings of wealth and robed them with poverty…

Pruned to its barest essentials, Oshiomhole’s charge to the Oba of Benin is simply this: “Your Majesty, tell the world that you were my critic, but are now my co-conspirator regarding the Edo governorship.” Had the oba bought the bait, he would have crashed his crown there and then. Whether as critic or as conspirator, he would have made his position entirely untenable, and so the wise king chose to tread on ground zero: “I never said anything against Obaseki.”  Correct! Oba of Benin: 1, Oshiomhole: 0. Before another sentence, let me warn the unwary: Speak silent words to royal beads, lest a loner comes soon and then Kano becomes just a joke.

Back to the man with no mediator between his mind and his mouth. As a senator, two-term governor and ex-chair of the ruling party, Comrade Oshiomhole seemingly has it all. Unfortunately, he has learnt nothing from his advancing years. For an established politician, Oshiomhole is too loose, too crude and too rude to have a future crafted in calm. He is a speeding truck whose driver has just suffered a stroke. He is impulsive and repulsive. The ex-chair of a political party talks like a councillor’s apprentice.

Oshiomhole has a big mouth but a little mind. He releases filth without filter. Last campaign season, Oshiomhole, though never associated with any college or varsity education, consistently queried the educational qualifications of Godwin Obaseki, a graduate of Nigeria’s premier university, the same individual he had vigorously campaigned for during the previous election, gyrating in his usual clown show.

Out of power, Oshiomhole craved more power, his eye on Lagos without the savvy of Lagos,  and Obaseki’s refusal to play the dunce had riled him to no end. Yet when in power he had run the fixers he met on the political terrain, including Tony Anenih of great memory, out of town. In November 2013, as he led his courtiers on a sanitation tour of Benin, Oshiomhole uttered some words that may yet adorn his epitaph: “You are a widow! Go and die!” Oshiomhole’s victim was a roadside hawker who had pleaded for clemency on account of her widowhood. Kneeling before the Comrade Emperor who had hitherto pilloried political leaders for a living, the widow pleaded for mercy over her meager means. But His Excellency would not show the same kindness he had preached to generations of leaders. Amid mounting public outrage, he tried to cover his buffoonery with a face-saving apology and N2m cash gift. For good measure, he gave the widow, Mrs Joy Ifije, some hasty portfolio: campaigner against street trading.

The Ifije incident is past, but Oshiomhole’s perversity is present. It so happened that recently, Governor Obaseki’s wife had, rather tactlessly, urged voters to support the governorship candidate with a wife, as it would enable women’s empowerment. Monday Okpebholo, now governor-elect, chose to ignore the jibe, but trust Osho Baba never to allow any crisis go to waste: “I was shocked to hear Mrs. Obaseki say our candidate has no wife. Here is a woman who has no child. Between him and Obaseki (sic), they have no child. They are even not ready to adopt (sic). I mean, I don’t blame anybody if you don’t have a child, but people who have love for children, they go to motherless home and adopt children.”

This is a completely senseless and audaciously godless statement but certain cretins blinded by political partisanship argued that the poor woman had fully deserved this cruel mockery because she had hinted at Oshiomhole’s minion’s marital status. It takes complete moral abdication to equate a needless jibe about marital status, a condition easily reversed, with brazen, Luciferic mockery of a couple’s childbearing struggles. Oshiomhole’s “I-don’t-blame-anybody-if you-don’t-have-a-child” is demonstrably silly, because he clearly blames the Obasekis for a condition over which they have no power, proving that he bears no rule over his spirit and goes wherever his mouth leads him. When you relate Osho Baba’s gloating over Mrs Obaseki’s childlessness to his go-and-die order to a hapless widow, the picture that emerges is that of an imperious, haughty clown.

If Oshiomhole could say such hurtful words in public, imagine what he would say in private. Now, Oshiomhole actually has certain innate skills that he could have sharpened with schooling, but he learnt nothing from Olusegun Obasanjo, the man he habitually harangued as NLC President. In any case, his argument that childless couples prove their love for children through adoption has no empirical basis, but that’s apparently also a needless statement because Oshiomhole lacks intellectual depth and even self-awareness.

Godwin Obaseki, the primary target of Oshiomhole’s ire, certainly does have his faults, but he is one of the few men of conscience we are lucky to have in this clime. He was the first to alert Nigerians to the Muhammadu Buhari government’s money-printing voodoo, and the massive downturns in the economy. Oshiomhole has been speaking far much more than the governor-elect, and he reminds me of the character Benjamin Benjamin in TM Aluko’s One man, one machete.  Oshiomhole is apparently in a dazed mood because of the momentary resurrection of his godfather status, but he will say something self-defeating very soon, then articles will appear in print and online rehabilitating his filth.

In July 2015, Oshiomhole alleged that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the same woman who used to tell governors like him the gains inherent in savings, had expended $1 billion on the re-election bid of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. Needless to say, the evidence he promised to provide “in the coming weeks” is yet to surface.

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