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Election season in the Nigerian environment is never short of inanities and absurdities. In language, disposition and conduct, the election campaign season particularly, often turns into a stretch of giddy period when talking nonsense appears to be fashionable, and common sense deserts many.
Unfortunately, the campaign period is a period when loyalty is tested. A number of politicians put themselves under pressure and throw caution overboard just to be seen to be loyal to whatever god they believe offers them a lifeline. Of course, for many politicians, all is fair in jostling to survive.
Even for all that, once in a while, a participant in the absurd revelry that characterizes the political campaign season stretches the line of absurdity beyond what can be ignored. That was the case last week with Adams Oshiomhole.
Oshiomhole is the senator presently representing Edo North. He is of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Before he arrived the senate, he had served as governor of Edo State, with the party chairmanship in between. Before, during and after his tenure as governor, till date, Oshiomhole is a man steeped in contradictions. He does not appear to mind. If he does, he would give everything to halt technology from further perfecting the tools for factchecking the accuracy and fidelity to fact in the public pronouncements of public figures.
Between 2008 and 2016, Oshiomhole served as state governor in Edo State. Contemporaneously, almost, Peter Obi, now the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDC) served as governor of Anambra State, 2006 to 2014.
Oshiomhole posted a decent performance as governor, from records. Nobody has ever denied him his pips in that outing. That however, was where it ended. There was no known report in the public domain of the state of Edo finances as at the time Oshiomhole left office as governor in 2016. Did he leave his successor and Edo State a healthy balance sheet? How much savings did he leave for his state?
In any case, not long after he left office, he parted ways with the successor he picked by himself. In the vitrioles and barrage of affront that he visited on his successor subsequently, Oshiomhole never referenced any robust balance sheet and savings he left for his successor. That is quite instructive. Had he left anything worth bragging about, Oshiomhole would have let the world know it. Indeed, he would have laid claims to anything and everything his successor achieved, as deriving from the bounty he blessed him with. But there was no reference to what he left behind. Till date. People in Edo State and beyond of course, make reference to some plush personal estates here and there.
In 2014, Peter Obi completed his two terms as governor of Anambra and left office in a blaze of glory. The very day he left office, he publicly released his hand over note with the hefty sums of money he was leaving in the coffers of Anambra State. The savings were in Naira and in US dollar accounts of Anambra State. The money in reference was not small by any calculation.
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His investments for the state were also remarkable. At the public ceremony marking Obi’s exit from the Government House in Awka, the event where he released his handover balance sheet were bank chief executives and such titans as Aliko Dangote and many others. The accolades were deservedly loud. Nigeria, for once, felt a sense of pride that there was a model in prudent management in a society identified more with profligacy and opaque handling public resources.
It was not just that Obi left humongous sums of money for his successor and Anambra state that attracted the attention of the world. His level of transparency was unprecedented in these parts. He could so easily have left office with half of what he left behind, as several other governors in the past and present do, one way or another.
Twelve years after Obi left office as governor, he is now running for president. Meanwhile the governor who succeeded him had completed two terms of eight years and also left office. Suddenly, the sitting governor of the same state, who had completed first term of four years, puts on a new eye glasses with which he read Anambra’s balance sheet of 12 years ago and discovers from what the late English novelist, Graham Greene once referred to as a unique angle, that what Obi publicly declared he left for Anambra State 12 years ago was not correct. By the way, Greene had reported that he once fell off a moving train and from beneath the fast-rolling wheels of the train, he saw the world from a unique angle.
Now, it is not what any one in Awka said he discovered in a 12-year balance sheet of Anambra that is remarkable in the absurdity of the present political season. It is the equally unique and indecent case of a contemporary of Peter Obi as governor suddenly jumping up without locus to question the balance book of another state while keeping mute on his own legacy as state governor. How much did Oshiomhole leave for Edo State when he left office as governor? That is the question.
If Oshiomhole says, look, I left more money for Edo State than Obi said he left for Anambra State, that can be a meaningful discussion. A debate can make sense there. But that is not what is happening.
Speaking in a television interview last week, the senator’s incomprehensible grouse was that Obi had said that he left $150m for Anambra State. He wondered how Obi as governor could have left his state $150 million when Federal allocation to states came in local currency. Just imagine that!
Even if Oshiomhole did not follow the tread much earlier where Alex Otti, now governor of Abia State had said that as a bank chief executive, he advised and assisted to convert Obi’s savings for Anambra into foreign currency and other financial instruments, is Oshiomhole proudly declaring that he does not know about domiciliary accounts? That is not even the issue.
Obi talked about the money he left for Anambra State, not for Edo State. How much did Senator Oshiomhole leave for Edo State when he left office in 2016? It will be so enlightening to know. Or have rats eaten his handover note? If Oshiomhole cannot wave his legacy and balance sheet in Edo State to shut Peter Obi up, he should save himself the embarrassment he is bringing onto himself. As Senator Ben Murray Bruce will say, it is just a matter of common sense.
