Omatsola Etuwewe, Benin City
The sight of Edo State Governor Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki in tears at an event just days before the election was unusual. It was a far cry from the boisterous and typically arrogant Obaseki, who dominated the state’s political landscape for the last eight years. His gait was weak, the swagger missing from his stride and a worry about not just his political future but his legacy, etched in his crumpled facial lines.
Obaseki’s name may not have been on the ballot, but his image and influence loomed large enough to have affected the chances of the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate in the election. Like many Nigerian governors, Obaseki handpicked Mr Asue Ighodalo as his chosen successor, and his tears reveal how much was at stake for him in the contest.
Days after Obaseki wept, he declared that the election was a do-or-die matter for him and the PDP. “If they win, we will die,” he thundered. This was seen as a Freudian slip that unwittingly exposed how much interest he vested in his choice of Ighodalo, a lawyer and banker as his successor.
Since succeeding his predecessor and former political benefactor, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, Obaseki has sparked numerous controversies and clashed with powerful figures, while ruling the state with a draconian fist that wrought countless actions depicting his total disregard for the law his office demanded him to uphold. There were indications that the electorates were preparing breakfast for him, but he was too carried away by his office to see the kitchen or catch the aroma.
From refusing to inaugurate 14 duly elected opposition lawmakers and placing the Edo State House of Assembly under lock and key for months to sidelining his deputy, Philip Shaibu, Obaseki’s governance has been marked by confrontations and swims against the tide.
His opponents argue that his tenure is riddled with broken promises, controversies, and betrayal of those who supported him, leading many of his close associates to secretly refer to him as the ‘Use-and-Dump Governor’.
He lives by his middle name, Nogheghase (one who must have his way), even when his ways contradicted the law, morals and sensitivity of the people he was elected to serve. Not even on matters involving the Uku Akpolokpolo, Ewuare II, the revered Oba of Benin Kingdom, did emperor Obaseki listen to voices of reason or yield his ground, no matter how slippery.
Ironically, the Benin monarch had during a visit by the governor to his palace lectured him on the ephemerality of the office he occupies: “It is good for you (Obaseki) to look beyond your office because you are not going to be there (forever). So that one day you can also sit here when you are no longer the governor.”
Obaseki, it seemed, was too intoxicated by the power of his office that he paid no heed to the monarch’s admonition. Political analysts say Obaseki ran the state and his relationships with iron-fist. He is popularly known as Ematon (iron in the Bini language) and he lived it as he crushed everything in his path, even matters that required guile and diplomacy received the Ematon treatment
The first victim to feel the impact of the moving train that Godwin Obaseki became was Oshiomole, the man who elevated him from obscurity and thrust him into the eyes of the Edo public, and Nigerians. The fallout between the hitherto chummy duo was as loud as its impact was seismic across Nigeria’s political landscape.
First, he ganged up with anti-Oshiomole elements in the All Progressives Congress, APC, and helped to dislodge him as National Chairman of the Party. He then gleefully celebrated his benefactor’s downfall fall by pumping fists and popping champagne with Oshiomole’s traducers in celebration of his ‘downfall’.
He was staunchly supported by his deputy, Comrade Philip Shuaibu, the man Oshiomole handpicked to compliment Obaseki’s ticket as running mate in 2016. The former House of Representatives member was the political force behind Obaseki’s throne, especially in Edo North. The duo swapped the APC for PDP in 2020, when it became apparent that Oshiomole would extract his pound of flesh by refusing him the APC’s ticket.
After getting his dream second term in 2020, he turned his scheming machinery against Shuaibu, who helped him negotiate the mazy path of his reelection campaign and helped to neutralize Oshiomole’s influence in Edo North. Obaseki machinated his deputy’s hasty impeachment, after hauling him, naked, through the muddy earth of Benin City and other parts of Edo State’s dilapidated roads.
Shaibu fell out with Obaseki
Shaibu was famously locked out of his Government House office on the orders of the emperor. His office was barricaded, secured with chains and padlocks. When the Deputy Governor inquired about the manacles on his gate, he was told by the Commandant that there was ‘order from above’.
Photographs of a dejected, visibly rattled Shaibu making frantic telephone calls in front of his locked office went viral online, alleged by the governor’s social media handlers to further humiliate him. After waiting for hours, a dejected Shaibu, who had been stripped of his official appointees, drove off.
Afterwards, the rubber stamp House of Assembly, which Obaseki once similarly put under lock and key, began impeachment proceedings against Shaibu. He was summarily impeached without the chance to defend himself. Despite being saved by the court that ruled his impeachment invalid, Shaibu remained ostracized from Dennis Osadebe’s House seat of power in GRA, Benin City.
Before Shaibu, there was a certain Nyesom Wike, former Rivers State governor and the current Federal Capital Territory Minister. Cornered by Oshiomhole’s APC, then Governor Wike was the man Obaseki scampered to. Creek Haven, the Rivers State Government House in Port Harcourt provided a haven for the wet, dazed and bedraggled Obaseki.
Ex-Rivers Governor and current FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike allegedly worked against PDP
In those days Wike was the mouthpiece of the PDP and its major financier. His Port Harcourt residence was a mecca of sorts for the party’s leaders and favour-seekers, including Obaseki. It was no surprise then that it was Wike who facilitated his integration into the PDP, and solidification of the party’s platform for him to contest and win reelection in 2024.
Amidst threats and octane-level tension, Wike stormed Edo State days before the election. He was the subject of harassment by anti-Obaseki forces within and outside the state. He stood firm in his support and worked tirelessly during and after the election to secure victory for the newly-minted PDP candidate.
Shortly after his inauguration, Ematon moved to hijack the party’s structure from established and longstanding members of the party, including the party’s former Chairman, Dan Orbih, and other associates of Wike’s.
The final straw in the duo’s relationship was the alleged gang-up by Obaseki with anti-Wike forces, including former Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, who purportedly sacrificed the South’s quest to produce a president in 2023 for his ambition to be a Vice President. With Okowa’s and Obaseki’s support, former VP Atiku Abubakar defeated Wike at the PDP primary but lost the general election to President Bola Tinubu of the APC.
Wike, who is perceived as vindictive and unforgiving, openly declared before the election that Obaseki’s and PDP’s candidate, Aisuen Ighodalo would not get his support. The humbled Edo Governor had taken Ighodalo to Wike to seek his support. “I will be neutral,” Wike said, in an interview before the election, but those who know the FCT Minister doubted his neutrality.
The most outrageous war the outgoing governor waged was against the Oba of Benin. From bickering over returned Bini artefacts to elevating Bini enigie (dukes) to rival the authority of the Oba. He removed the enigie from the Oba’s control and put them under the State Government by resurrecting a controversial decades-old edict. The move was seen as a spite of the monarch.
“Obaseki has done everything to drag the highly revered monarch, His Imperial Majesty, Omo N’ Oba N’ Edo, Uku Akpolokpolo, Ewuare II, Oba of Benin into the murky waters of Nigerian politics, without success,” Josef Omorotionmwan, a Bini scholar said in an article published in a national newspaper.
The Oba is one of Nigeria’s most respected monarchs and the Governor’s action turned him into the monarch’s eghian (enemy), in a land where Aiguobarueghian (nobody contends with the Oba) is both a popular name and title.
Two suspended enigie, Professor Gregory Akenzua and Chief Edomwonyi Ogiegbaen, are the appellants in the court case (B/250os/2023) challenging the lordship of the Oba, but Obaseki is seen as the puppeteer.
The issue collectively rankled Bini’s home and abroad in a manner reminiscent of when Chief Lucky Igbenedion caused Obase Erediauwa II to appear in court over an election suit in the 3rd Republic. The politician son of the Esama of Benin Kingdom had hinted in his suit challenging the election of John Odigie Oyegun as Governor in 1992, that the Palace of the Oba interfered in the election and contributed to the outcome through a statement by the Isekhure of the Kingdom, Chief Nosakhare Isekhure.
Oba Erediauwa II famously walked, bare feet, from his palace to court in full red regalia, attracting a motley crowd of Binis who abandoned their businesses to join his procession, weeping, wailing and cursing as they marched with him to court.
Although Ewuare II did not attend the recent court session, the Edo people defied Obaseki’s government’s warning for people to stay away from the court. They came out in droves and hung around the premises in a manner reminiscent of the 1992 Igbenedion vs Oyegun litigation.
The coagulation of these anti-Obaseki forces was a key part of the issues that shaped voting patterns, especially in Edo South (dominated by the Oba’s subjects), where the PDP could not amass the number of votes that it needed to neutralise the well-oiled political machinery of Oshiomole and Shaibu in the North.
September 8 election took the ematon (hammer) from Obaseki and handed it to his opponents, the Bini traditionalist, the Oba’s subjects and an amalgam of forces of the toes he stepped on, and those he betrayed. They were merciless in their vengeance and two weeks after, Obaseki has become a molten Emotan.
Will Obaseki bounce back?
