Edo 2024: Another Problem Coming (APC) – By Erasmus Ikhide
Barely two days ago, I coined an appropriate acronym for the All Progressives Congress, APC, – “Another Problem Coming” – to the chagrin of the party’s media handlers, invoking the trauma of unrelenting tragedy APC/Tinubu administration foisted the nation, while employing uncanny jackboot strategy to silence and muffle dissenting voices.
It’s shocking that the destruction of the nation’s economy arising from fuel subsidy removal’s fiat, the inflation flames, the huge wastages in government and the unremitting corruption and cronyism, the complete asphyxiation of citizens’ plight by the unfathomably clueless Tinubu’s Presidency is enough for the government to tweak its policy thrust now that the nation is about to witness a second version of #ENDSARS protest.
One had expected these hired media minders of APC/Tinubu to signpost any novel achievements of the administration for nearly two decades in power, aside missed opportunities and aborted chances. While the rest of conscientious humans are bemoaning the harsh economy meltdown which spared neither the poor nor the rich alike in the country, there are depraved humanity in the quiet conclaves of Aso Rock.
Nigeria seat of power – who are living in absolute denial that the nation has headed in the wrong direction. The benign and benevolent lamentation of long suffering citizens should have enlivened and attracted humane responses from a responsible government, with a calming balm to lull Nigerians into accepting whatever policies the government wishes to push through.
The general perception and public cynicism and increasing dismay and disapproval of Monday Okpebholo in Edo State and everything with the semblance of APC, backed by the vengeance of a central government that refused to crawl back from its impudent insensitivity while the nation burns is truly troubling indeed. It’s on this basis the parallel has been drawn that the half-baked and half-naked Monday Okpebholo wouldn’t’ be different from his godfather, President Tinubu, a man whose administration has butchered Nigeria economy and made the nation spineless.
To be sure, Edo State needs a Governor whose production economy resonates with the likes of Asue Ighodalo, not pedestrian politician like Monday Okpebholo who is schooled in exchange of platitudes and clannishness to massage the ego of his ethnic conclaves.
The timid APC candidate led Edo electorates into his world view a few weeks ago when he said he would have employed many people into Sterling Bank from Ewohimi if he was Asue Ighodalo, the former chairman of the bank. While Asue Ighodalo is churning out his manifesto on how he will tame the grip of crisis of scarcity goods and services and the unbearable harsh economic climate as governor of Edo State, Monday Okpebholo is busy poisoning the political space with his toxic ethnic chant of employing only Ewohimi indigenes, if he was the Chairman of Sterling Bank.
There’s no doubt that such tragic misstep on the part of Monday Okpebholo which bother on narrow mindedness, primitive inclination and outright discontent and hatred for other tribes in a multiethnic state like Edo automatically sounds a death knell for his governorship ambition. There’s no better time than this moment of untold hardship when Edo people are feeling the pains and pangs of hunger like every other Nigerian for the APC candidate to tell the people how he wishes to revamp the agribusiness sector should he be voted into office to stem the tide of savage scarcity of food.
Dr. Asue Ighodalo’s manifesto on his strategic plans for outright liquidation of poverty and hunger is seminal. Asue’s exceptional agenda for agriculture and forthrightness to bringing a prosperous Edo will in no time signpost the state as a model in Nigeria.
To achieve this, what is needed is effective affinity between the people and the government with watchful security architecture. It is not too late for Monday Okpebholo to constructively tell Edo people his basic agenda to lift the state out of the woods and how he will achieve it, instead of entertaining electorates with brinkmanship and risible farce.
Erasmus Ikhide contributed this piece via: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com.
