How Does Orbih Fit Into Obaseki’s Comedy Of Errors? Edo PDP Group Asks?

We were greeted with a press release signed by one Comrade Jerome Eramho accusing Chief Dan Orbih, the South-South Vice Chairman of PDP, of being behind the political ordeal that has besieged the Edo State PDP for a while now.

Although we know the character who is behind the press release; a jobless serial betrayal who is looking for an appointment, by all means, we shall not name him or elevate his notoriety of lurking around government offices and the party secretariat looking for relevance and a job by doing any available “Afamaco” social media jobs that are never officially assigned to him.

However, we are saying with equanimity that the blackmail against the character of Chief Dan Orbih must stop, and must stop now!

For the records, which this character cannot deny, as the Chairman of the PDP Campaign Council, Chief Dan Orbih went round exactly 192 wards trying to reassure the people that they should vote for Governor Godwin Obaseki in spite of his damaged image as peddled by the APC.

Does that sound like one who worked against the collective decision of the party as claimed by the so-called PDP Integrity Group, Edo State Chapter? And to ridicule their own realities, the disillusioned group claimed that Obaseki/Shaibu mandate has continued to make the Edo people proud.

What a laughable upside-down thought-process lacking in fact. The group would have given merit to their claims by pointing to the ongoing developmental, socioeconomic, and digital infrastructures in the state that only they can see.

We call on the governor, Godwin Obaseki, to come out clean to the entire people of the state irrespective of their political affiliations why he has refused to govern properly over one year after he won the election with a simple majority.

To continue to blackmail Chief Dan Orbih and malign his character for the obvious failure of the governor is a notorious commonplace nuisance that is no longer selling to the people of Edo State who know how to separate party politics from governance.

The only validation of Governor Godwin Obaseki’s mandate is to meet with the social contract he signed with the people of Edo State instead of using illicit means of blackmailing Chief Dan Orbih to perfume his own failure.

As opposed to the group’s down-wrong insinuation, Chief Dan Orbih is not the ‘only’ leader in Edo State PDP, he is one of the several leaders across the state the governor does not consult with on issues of governance and party politics.

Whatever happens to the fortunes of the party must be the fault of the governor who had not come to the party with clean hands, not Chief Dan Orbih, or any other leader.

Was it Chief Dan Orbih who told the governor to appoint the SSG to the government without consulting with the party leaders, even the chairman of the party?

Was it Chief Dan Orbih who told him not to consult with the party leaders in the appointments of the Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff without consultations with stakeholders of the party?

Was it Chief Dan Orbih who told the governor not to be able to appoint commissioners until today after one year after the election?

Eleven commissioners were sworn in today and two Senior Special Advisers, none is from the old PDP. Is that the fault of Chief Dan Orbih?

Let it be clear to the blind and the deaf; Governor Godwin Obaseki did not come with clean hands to have the moral rectitude to be blackmailing Chief Dan Orbih through known veiled proxies.

He is neither fair nor equitable. So far, he has populated the government with his retinue of family, friends, and political followers to the detriment of those in the old PDP.  Who does that?

Are members of this so-called banal PDP Integrity Group blind and deaf to these?

Instead of appealing to Chief  Dan Orbih to put the interest of the PDP at heart, which he has, a fact which is never in doubt, this run-of-the-mill group should be appealing to governor Obaseki to be sensitive to the feelings and yearnings of members he met in the party that he has since been treating with total disdain, arrogance, contempt, and disrespect, just as he did with the APC members before he was discharged unceremoniously from the party –  an attitude he has refused to drop in spite all PDP did for him with accommodation.

The issue is not about Chief Dan Orbih or the LGA PDP chairmen and members of the party; what we have today in Edo State is an unusual situation where the governor has made nepotistic appointments without consulting any leader of the party yet he is asking this same leader to go help him dissolve constitutionally elected excos so he can continue to conquer the party by appointing his men from APC into those positions.

Chief Dan Orbih or any leader cannot say our brothers who have been brought from APC cannot join the PDP structure, what all well-meaning members of the party are saying after seeing the handwriting on the wall by the governor is that those who were duly elected in the constitutionally empowered congresses must be allowed to serve out their tenure as there is no longer need for harmonization.

We cannot circumvent the party’s constitution and truncate these existing tenure just to please the governor based on the highly vexatious notion that we “must carry his people along…” Carrying his people along preclude negating the provisions of the constitution of the party.

This is the conundrum this said faceless group is not looking at; how come Governor Godwin Obaseki, who enjoyed the benefits of coming to PDP to run with his deputy, a man who enjoyed the benefits of appointing his SSG, CoS, Deputy CoS, Head of Service,  all the sole administrators of the entire 18 LGAs without consulting with critical PDP stakeholders is asking also for the party structure through illegal harmonization? What exactly does he need the party structure for?

The truth is, as a group, we wish for fairness, equity, and justice in PDP. Harmonization can only suffice if we go back to the status quo; that is, the appointments he had made so far should be dissolved so that we can now engineer a clean slate of discussion on the issue of harmonization where all the agreements will be put on white and black with legitimate legal backing.

We would like to reiterate that the consistent blackmail of Chief Dan Orbih must stop, and those of other leaders of the party who with hindsight, know the clandestine plan of the governor.

He should look inward as the cause of the problem affecting the party because of his authoritarian arrogation of absolute power to himself as the ‘only leader’ of the party rather than scanning the darkened horizon looking for who to blame.

We advise the so-called “integrity group” to call on their “god the governor, who never does anything wrong,  to think about what political watchers and indeed the whole Nigerians would feel about his integrity, for waging a war against those who rescued him after suffering a heavy defeat in the hands of his former landlords just a few months ago.

This scenario seems familiar, isn’t it?

Dcn. Darlington Okpebholo-Ray

PDP Justice & Equity Forum (PDP-JEF)

06/10/2021

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