#EdoDecides2024: Reno Omokri writes
“Let us learn to accept the results of elections in Nigeria. The PDP won this same election in 2020 when the APC controlled the Federal Government. We did not complain then. The defeated candidate of the APC, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, did not make comments that threatened the peace of the state.
We are allowing the sentiment that is popular in our immediate location to affect our judgment of the Edo election. Your party may be strong in your state. But this is not your state. This is Edo State. All politics is local.
The PDP won in 2020 because we were united. Philip Shaibu, our great mobiliser, and Dan Orbih, our party’s strong man in Edo, were with Obaseki. This time around, the PDP was divided. Philip Shaibu and Orbih were with our opponents. And we saw this coming when Shaibu was treated shabbily after the primaries. He ought not to have been treated like that.
I would like to say I am surprised at the election result. But I am not. If you want to be emotional, be my guest. But elections are won by rational people.
You have a Governor scaring the electorate by saying the election is a “Do or die affair”?
And knowing the almost godlike authority of the Oba of Benin, why would Obaseki have even quarrelled with His Royal Majesty, Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Uku Akpolokpolo Oba Ewuare II, over the abode of the returned Benin artefacts? Those relics were looted from the Oba’s palace and were the property of the Oba’s direct ancestors. At least, the Oba ought to have the main say over their mainstay.
It was hubris on the part of Governor Obaseki to have thought otherwise. How can you be named Obaseki and fail to defer to the Oba? Your name literally means the Oba’s favour is better than success in trading or other endeavours?
As I am today, if the Olu of Warri slaps me, I will apologise to him for giving him reasons to slap me. That is how much people who understand royalty respect a natural monarch.
Politics is about addition. You try to avoid subtraction. No matter how popular you think you are, if your opponent is practising addition and you are implementing subtraction, the result of the election is a foregone conclusion, even if you allow social media to mislead you. Remember, there are no polling booths on the Internet.
Sometimes, you win elections, and sometimes you learn. But you only lose if you refuse to learn.”
Reno Omokri
