Edo ‘24: A motley crowd of guber aspirants

It’s another season of gubernatorial aspirations in Edo State and the league of aspirants is growing by the day, with each of the aspirants moving on with their own ‘Roman mob’. This is actually not unusual in a democracy; it is perfectly normal and accords with the tenets of the game. However, certain anxieties and […]

It’s another season of gubernatorial aspirations in Edo State and the league of aspirants is growing by the day, with each of the aspirants moving on with their own ‘Roman mob’.

This is actually not unusual in a democracy; it is perfectly normal and accords with the tenets of the game.

However, certain anxieties and fears are emerging in certain corners that are not unrelated to the desired ‘fairness and equity’ to a particular Senatorial zone, which some think should produce the next governor having lost out for the slot for too long. There is also the perceived over dominance of another senatorial zone over the years.

It’s indeed a very dicey situation that is already upsetting previous political permutations, calculations and strategies by contending political forces.

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The ‘emilokan’ syndrome started playing out from the Edo Central Senatorial Zone, which felt it needed to get a fair share of state’s star political prize, especially after the Appeal Court sacked the efforts of Prof (now Senator) Osarheime Osunbor in 2008. The zone’s last success was with late Prof Ambrose Alli in 1979 in the Second Republic on the platform of the defunct UPN.

By this fact, therefore, many gubernatorial interests from the Edo South and Edo North senatorial zones had been muted for a while, apparently to test the waters but that is no more! The variables have changed as it looks now; it has become everybody’s and anybody’s game.

Politics, they say, is a game of numbers and in its practice here in this clime, moral consideration is a scarce virtue as the end justifies the means in their Machiavellian interpretation. The new godfathers, who were godsons only yesterday – are upping their game.

The truth be told, different political parties are in contest and there really can be no uniformity in their zoning formulae as each operates its own different constitution. The generality of the people may wish a political direction but the party decision overrides, at least at the primaries level.

It would seem that Esanland – Edo Central Senatorial Zone – has yet been unable to put its house in order to field a consensus candidate acceptable across board and this perceived ’weakness’ on its part has obviously been capitalised upon by other gubernatorial gladiators from Edo South and Edo North zones who had been sheathing their swords, watching events as they unfolded. There is no stopping them now as every political bloc will always seek to maximise its inherent advantages. That’s the name of the game. Morality is for the domain of the ecclesia.

By the last counts, at least a dozen aspirants have emerged from each of the state’s three senatorial zones and from the different political parties; we are still counting!

The next few weeks promises to be very interesting and eventful for all the political parties as they separately move towards their party primaries.

Without being pessimistic, the respective parties must watch out for post-primaries acrimonies, which may turn out to be their albatross, especially when many of the aspirants’ political ancestry and antecedents are foggy and murky.

Notwithstanding all these, Edo people think that nothing but the best is good for them in these troubled times.

 

Celsus Ohain, a veteran journalist, author and historian, resides in Benin City