Oshiomhole’s denouement 

LAST Tuesday, VP Yemi Osinbajo, let off one of his off-the-cuff, trademark wry jokes at a commissioning event in Edo State, where political and economic rednecks gathered for a front-row member, cement-matador, the BUA Group. The ambience and colour of the celebration squealed another fortune conquest. But the usual facade of “to God and humanity” was also overt and in right quantity. After paying the protocol homage, Osinbajo switched on his usual benign visage and hailed; “Oshio Baba, I have been made aware he makes all things happen” and before the gathering recovered, Pastor Yemi was wearing his inscrutable visual mask again.

Since the return of President Muhammadu Buhari, the villa has been doing a Greco-Roman style with the media and public space promoting the report of Osinbajo as a standing-passenger in Buhari’s presidency. The heat of the informania-control is likely to get the so-called mafia to yield some space to douse the fire of estrangement. It is a poorly-hidden gist Oshio is close to being named the acting SGF. Does Osinbajo’s salutation have anything to do with anything, considering how “juicy” the position has become in crude collection of the illicit including IDPs’ beans? As SGF, Oshio, without doubt, will definitely make many things happen.

If he could fix Edo Deputy Governor Shuaibu’s aspiration with the sprawling baggage around his neck before the gubernatorial poll, the miniature Tony Anenih, could do wonders for his principal as his main henchman. What about the overnight wonders of Edo election results? Even the mess of “widow, go and die” was fixed with an early morning coffee and a million Naira. Oshio’s capacity as a ruffler and muffler is well-acknowledged.

But some boil with stench of a discharge could prove too stubborn for a mere pinch, press and clean up treatment. When he tried to be North-compliant (maybe because Sultan was seated suffocatingly or for the sake of Abuja appointment) on restructuring, oratory and dare-devilry failed him. I thought of an elaborate dissect of his rejected dissertation, but Yinka Odumakin’s thoughts in his Candid Notes column in Vanguard got me shelving the idea. Yes, something could still be added, but the tumult running through the dismantling effort of the “comrade” against another “comrade” should be enough for now. Odumakin did an irreverent biography that could make history pause, before deciding on Oshio’s immemorial page. Expectedly, e-responders feasted on the piece. Majority opinion agreed with Odumakin’s verdict on the crumbling of the quick-sand on which Oshio’s odyssey, beginning from his formative years, was thought to have been built.

The controversy over his primary and secondary education which he hasn’t also been able to fix was the highlight for the internet-warriors who Minister of Information hailed endlessly as Social Influencers pre-2015 elections when virulent criticism of government officials hadn’t become hate-speech. The contention is how possible and practicable was Oshiomhole attending the Iyamoh primary school between 1957 and 1962 by his own claim, when the said school, in Edo State Ministry of Education’s records, was founded in 1963. Well, those records used to be, because a mysterious midnight fire consumed the registry of the ministry in the thick of the controversy.

By his own claim, he equally graduated from Blessed Martins Secondary Modern School in 1965, three years after supposedly leaving a primary school officially founded a year after he claimed to have graduated from it! And to think the former governor was just 12 years old in 1965, having been born in 1953 by his own admission! Incredulous.

The arithmetic also means he began school at age four. Maybe. But wait, he isn’t a giant by any measure and wasn’t generations past, including his, all about an intending pupil’s right hand touching the left ear and vice-versa? If he eventually made it to the SGF seat with all the yet-to-be-made scandals, it could be the lot of the office, to be the crisis-centre for this administration.

Two e-battlers however “killed” it for me. Defending Oshio, one said “Odumakin is saying rubbish. I know the school very well and it was founded in 1962”. Another replied “So, he was so brilliant he started going there from 1957 because he had the foresight that a school will be established there later”. I have since been in stitches.