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By Ehichioya Ezomon
The heat for the race to the Osadebey Avenue seat of government in Benin City, Edo State, is about to commence. The governorship election is scheduled for September 19.
The primaries for June 2 and 27 have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has fixed June 1 to release new guidelines for the remaining events in the poll calender.
Although the focus is on the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the battle royale is located in the ruling APC, as a tug-of-war has raged in the platform between Governor Godwin Obaseki and his predecessor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.
The struggle for control of the chapter got to a head in March 2020 when Oshiomhole escaped sack as the National Chairman of the APC – a plot backed by Obaseki to checkmate Oshiomhole from denying him the ticket to run in September.
Well, the chips will be down soon as the APC holds the primaries: a contest shaping out to be between Obaseki and a “consensus” pick from the Oshiomhole camp.
Leaders and aspirants of the faction had met in Benin City, but failed to choose a stand-alone aspirant against Obaseki. But sources indicate that they want to settle for one among them, “to prevent Obaseki from running with the APC flag.”
Save the Obaseki-Oshiomhole feud, the party ticket was “a shoo-in” for Obaseki as the incumbent, in tandem with the principle of “right of first refusal.” But the Oshiomhole camp has vowed to stop his second term ambition.
Which side carries the day depends essentially on the mode of the primaries: consensus, indirect or direct election, going by the constitution of the APC.
Getting a consensus candidate entails the party stakeholders in Edo State agreeing to confer their mandate on one of the aspirants, who will be ratified at a state congress.
Indirect primaries involve electing some party members from ward and local government congresses, who then vote at a state congress to pick the party candidate.
Eligible to vote at the congresses are elected party officials at ward, council, state and national levels; elected members of the State and National Assemblies; and some political appointees at federal, state and council levels.
The direct primaries involve all card-carrying members of the APC, gathering at the wards to vote for candidates of their choice, and the aspirant with the highest votes declared the winner and candidate of the party at the September poll.
The problems start at this juncture, especially for Obaseki, who’s at loggerheads with Oshiomhole, his acclaimed political godfather that pushed his choice as the APC candidate in the 2016 election.
Getting a consensus nominee is very unlikely due to the division in the chapter, resulting in a media war, suspensions of even Obaseki and Oshiomhole, clashes, bloodshed, arson and recourse to legal redress.
That narrows the options to indirect and direct primaries. Unless his challengers have the wherewithal to counter his incumbency and war chest, Obaseki is favoured by an indirect election, based on his potential control over the delegates to the lower congresses, and the state congress.
But the governor may lose the ticket in a direct primary contest, particularly if the opposing camp fields a strong “consensus” aspirant against him.
The decider, though, is the National Working Committee (NWC) of the APC, saddled with choosing the mode of governorship and legislative primaries, and the conduct of same in the states.
Oshiomhole heads the NWC, and may be able to influence the picking of a primary process that will prevent Obaseki from snatching the APC ticket.
Yet, there’s hope for the governor in a three-man panel (and the Chief Bisi Akande national reconciliation committee) instituted by President Muhammadu Buhari, to resolve the crisis in the Edo APC chapter.
The three-man committee was to prioritise the division in the chapter owing to the governorship election that holds in September.
The outcome of the panel’s efforts isn’t in the public domain, but it seems it extracted a truce, temporarily, between the warring factions.
But recent altercations over a “consensus meeting” by the Oshiomhole group, and the Edo government’s publication of the report of an inquiry that indicted Oshiomhole over funding of the Specialist Hospital in Benin City, suggest a resumption of hostilities by the camps.
Coming to the primaries, the stake of every aspirant is to win. Still, winning has more meaning for Obaseki, to demonstrate that he didn’t just ride on Oshiomhole’s back to power in 2016, but he’s capable of being his own man in a treacherous political arena.
Thus, the die is cast for the primaries that will separate the men from the boys, and settle, once and for all, the actual hegemon: Obaseki or Oshiomhole in the Edo chapter of the APC since 2007 when Oshiomhole happened on the political scene.
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* Mr. Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria
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