One uneventful morning, embattled Governor Godwin Obaseki, alongside his countless aides and assistance, woke up and all of a sudden formed a campaign mantra. That uneventful morning was last week Saturday; that uneventful morning was barely 50 days to the election date of the hotly contested Edo State gubernatorial; that uneventful morning was a historic moment for the most brazen daylight plagiarism.
Devoid of thought, originality, and foresight, Obaseki’s campaign mantra hit the stands and screens, blaring itself in poorly colored letters: “Make Edo Great Again.” As it appeared and formed in the eyes and minds of the readers and viewers, only one thing came to mind: Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again. But in Obaseki’s copying of this idea, we find a man who is ignorant and dumb to the bones and marrows.
For Donald Trump, the antecedents and preceding narratives warrants and justifies such mantra. For Obaseki, it doesn’t. Donald Trump was a conservative republican coming against a liberal democratic who, in Trump’s view, was complicit in the failure, incompetence, inefficiency, and corruption that afflicts America at the time of the campaign. Trump intended to come and change the existing norm and order, to drain the swamp.
But here is Obaseki, the incumbent governor seeking to make Edo State, a constituency under his care and leadership for four years, great again. Two implications follow: first, it is a clear concession of failure, an admittance that his first term was nothing but an abominable misadventure; secondly, the adoption reveals the depth of Obaseki’s ignorance, dullness, and intellectual blindness. How, exactly, can a man make such a mistake? What swamp is he going to drain—the pool of his own mess?
The fact remains that the PDP, right from their shameful acceptance and automatic adoption of Obaseki and his band of failures as gubernatorial candidates, went into the campaign without strategy and initiative. The latest plagiarist mantra was produced in a hurry and under the influence of mounting pressures coming from the popular criticisms that while Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu is leading an issue-based campaign with the SIMPLE AGENDA, Obaseki goes about seeking whom to devour with childish propagandas characterized by glaring falsehood.
Perhaps it becomes imperative at this juncture, to ask an already biting and relevant question: If Obaseki is just setting to make Edo great, what has he been doing in the past four years? Sleeping and dozing through governance while supervising a looting spree? Enabling violence and honoring thuggery? Closing down tertiary institutions and diverting state funds to his private company, AfrInvest? Going on an all-out war of opposition and dissenters?—which is the true legacy of Obaseki’s tenure.
Obaseki, judging from the ongoings, is simply a rudderless child on a declining slope. Every attempt he makes reveals just what he wishes to conceal: that he is not deserving to lead, that he is thoughtless, and that he is insufficient. Admittedly, Obaseki has tried a lot, testing deep waters and making effort to clothe his weaknesses; but it remains one thing to try, which is the only true remedy to his plight: to give up politics and leadership. It doesn’t suit him.
By John Mayaki
