Charles Idahosa is a household name in Edo politics. From being a local government chairman to Director of Protocol and Commissioner for Information under Luck Igbinedion and lately Political Adviser to former Governor Adams Oshiomole for eight years, Idahosa has established the ‘Agbagbasiaka’ political dynasty, which was formed by his late father, as a force to reckon with. At the height of the crisis in the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State, he led a group of APC leaders to warn the erstwhile national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, of the consequences of tampering with the second term ambition of Godwin Obaseki. The politician speaks to SATURDAY TRIBUNE’s ‘SUYI AYODELE on the Godwin Obaseki administration in Edo State and the general insecurity in the country.
Your party, the PDP, recorded a major victory on Wednesday with the judgment of a Benin High Court nullifying the candidacy of the APC deputy governorship candidate, Gani Audu. What does that portend for the PDP in Edo State?
I will not call it a victory because it was clear as daylight that that ticket was faulty. We know all the attempts made by their counsel. They transferred the case from Benin High Court to Abuja. They brought it back. They said the judge that was handling it in Abuja was too close to Wike. They transferred it again to the Chief Judge. They used all kinds of delay tactics so that they could partake in the election. Now the election is over and they have been humiliated and decimated – they had no candidate. The people that nominated them, there is a court judgment that their secretariat was illegal. I don’t see it as a victory. They struggled to partake in the election and we beat them with over 88,000 votes.
Governor Obaseki said he would constitute his cabinet around February but there is the impression that his inability to constitute his cabinet immediately is as a result of internal crisis within the PDP…
There is no crisis whatsoever. Just look at the time he constituted his cabinet in his first term, was there any crisis then? You see, people just try to create problems where there are no problems. There is no crisis whatsoever. What you read is the social media. I know a newspaper like yours will not write a story like that. It is only the social media. There is no crisis in the Edo PDP. There is no problem whatsoever. The APC said he [Governor Godwin Obaseki] was not good enough. This was a man that they cleared and hailed for four years. But he went to the PDP. We are grateful to the PDP. Within a short time, their internal mechanism was moblised. They already had about four formidable aspirants that were ready for the ticket. We came, they saw the viability in Godwin Obaseki and they gave us the ticket without any election. They all stepped down. So, we appreciate that. There is no problem; he is just taking his time. There are lots of things that we will not make known to the media that he is putting together in the government. The last four years was something that was manipulated and operated by Oshiomhole. I am not going to tell you. I am not going to make it a public thing, the internal thing we are sorting out in terms of the problems that are in government. Ghost workers have filled the whole place. Everything was muddled up. A lot of things went wrong. So, that is what he is really trying to clear before forming a cabinet, not that there is a problem. By the time he does that, he will put his government in place.
This brings us to the issue of those of you that left the APC for the PDP. How smoothly are you being integrated into the PDP?
I will tell you the truth, it is not smooth. But you have to understand that nobody likes to lose a position. By the time we came into the PDP, they already had standing executives such as local government chairmen, party chairman and others. And when we left the APC, we had the chairmen of the party in the state, we had local government chairmen and they are now nothing in the new place they have gone to. So, it is not really a problem. The people that came with us are now saying, ‘where are we now?’ We are not going to force the PDP to remove their chairmen and then you take over. What we are trying to do is negotiation. We are still talking. We are hopeful that we can do something that will favour those who are with us. We don’t have a major problem.
We won the election in cooperation with the PDP, so we are very happy. The PDP is back in government after about 12 years. So, we will sort it out. It is just that human beings don’t like change. Some people who were ward chairmen where they were before now turned into ordinary persons and not because they lost an election. We are trying to dialogue. It is not a major crisis and at the end of the day, we will get there. As I speak to you, we are talking.
[Adams] Oshiomole created a lot of problems within the APC, but we thank God that the PDP welcomed us. They gave us the umbrella when we were looking for succour and we are not going to be ungrateful to them. But at the same time, we need to negotiate terms because a lot of PDP people are ready to work with us. But we don’t want a situation where many will be so desperate they will go after Obaseki. It was when he was disqualified that we made up our minds to go somewhere else. So, what we are having now is a normal reaction. We will take care of it.
We learnt that in the course of getting Governor Obaseki to come over to the PDP, one of the conditions put on the table was the Esan agenda, that is, after Obaseki’s tenure, the Esan people would take a shot at the governor’s seat. What are your disposition and the disposition of Edo South people to that arrangement?
There was nothing put on the table. Whoever told you that was lying. Is Orbih (Dan), the state chairman at that time, from Esan? Nobody talked about anybody’s agenda. That is the kind of story they carried on the social media and the lies they carry about. There was nothing as a condition to say when we come, there is an Esan agenda. Godwin Obaseki, as APC governor, had a soft spot for Esan and always believed that there should be fairness in everything and not because he went to the PDP. An agenda that after Obaseki, it would be Esan, nothing like that was discussed in all the meetings that were held. I am a leader of the party. We will look at the most viable candidate when the time comes. But nobody is thinking about that now. The year 2024 is still far off. A lot of things will happen. So, nothing has been talked about, the agenda of Esan or whatever.
If you watched Obaseki closely during his campaign, he never mentioned anything like that. So, I don’t think it is truw that there is an agenda of a particular tribe. When the time comes, we will look at all the candidates that show interest with fairness because we are all one. The beauty of Edo is that every ethnic group in the state takes something from the Bini background. So, we are not strangers; we are all Edo people. Among the Edo people, you speak Bini; you speak Etsako; you speak Esan. So, we will look at it and make a decision but we are not talking about that now.
What do you make of the general insecurity in the country?
I have the privilege of speaking with the governor on most of these things and insecurity is very bad across the country. I come from Ehor and you know the road to my place is the hub of kidnapping and robbery. During Christmas and New Year, I did not go home. I had to send money to the family to do whatever they wanted to do. That is my place. Uhunmwode is where all those things are taking place. Unfortunately, the EndSAS protest was a big shame because some of us have a lot of information that we don’t have to splash on the pages of newspapers. Most of these things that are being done are sponsored. But they are failing. These people I knew for some strange reasons are still walking freely. Like the EndSARS protest, that was not a protest against anything. It was for a regime change. They wanted to cause the Arab Spring in Nigeria. But Nigeria is not like that. Nigeria is too big. Everything is based on tribalism and that is why you see that revolution cannot succeed here because they will throw tribal sentiment and interest into it. So, a lot of people within the system are creating insecurity to undermine the governments in their states and the rest of them.
As I aksed a few weeks ago, how could protesters, if indeed they were protesters, attack Benin prisons and free all the inmates? You already knew that the prison in Sapele Road was busted. They waited for these people to walk with all their cudgels, burn some police stations on their way and they got to Oko prison and freed everybody there. That was interesting. Where were the security people? Where was the army? Where was the air force? They are all along the Airport Road and coincidentally, I live in that area. I saw them trekking and the next thing I heard was that Oko had been busted. We need serious security in Oko. So, insecurity has to be with the Federal Government. There must be devolution of power. There must be state police. There should be local vigilantes. They should engage the Enogie and Odionweres to set up their own vigilance groups because they know their territories. You cannot bring a man from Katsina or Maiduguri to come and police Edo. He doesn’t know anywhere. And at that meeting, I said the greatest example for state police is when [Lawrence] Anini was terrorising old Bendel State and then President [Ibrahim] Babangida said draft all the citizens of Bendel to Edo and they brought Parry (Osayande), who was a DIG then and others to come here.
In less than 72 hours, Anini was picked up and that was because people trust their own. Somebody just walked into the police headquarters and said: ‘I want to see Parry Osayande. I will not talk to any person’. And he told him, ‘Anini is by my house now. He comes there every night’ and they just dispatched a special squad and caught Anini. That was how the siege ended. So, we need state police, we need local police, because they know the territory. The people will trust them and give them information. On the issue of security, you need to give the states more powers. We are told that governors are Chief Security Officers. It is a lie. The Commissioners of Police don’t take instructions from governors. I have been in cabinet and I have been in the state Exco, you if tell them, they will say let me clear it from Abuja. They don’t take instructions from governors. They just call them that big name: chief security officers of states. It is not true. Until will look at all these things, there will continue to be insecurity.
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