Philip Shaibu And The Curse Of The Second Fiddle -By Kene Obiezu

Philip Shaibu has been impeached as the deputy governor of Edo State and replaced by thirty-eight-year old Omobayo Godwin. He has declared his impeachment illegal, but until a court of law follows suit, such a declaration would remain beyond his fiat as an erstwhile deputy governor.

In Nigerian politics, the heads that are reared up too soon are swiftly cut off and served in salomenic style as the prize for ambition in a gathering of power. Whenever  deputy governors have replaced governors, it has been a case of restraint, and sometimes helplessness. Otherwise, it is only hostility that is displayed. That hostility now haunts Shaibu.

Since he indicated his intention to become governor, he has become the number one enemy to power in the state. Godwin Obaseki, the governor, has been open in his opposition to Shaibu’s bid. Obaseki’s grouse that Shaibu did not tell him has quickly become fierce opposition to his bid in all respects. It is a strange case of a governor being in the opposition together with the legislature, all arrayed in battle against one man.

As the theatre has unfolded in Edo State, turning theatrics to weapons in one of Nigeria’s most politically conscious states,  the impossible fate of a deputy governor  who aspires to be more than a figurehead has been laid bare.

Snippets from Shaibu’s side of the story which have come more out of compulsion than actual consternation or contempt betray feelings of betrayal. Having sunk his resources into a joint ticket, he feels he should now be the first name on what is a testament to its success story. But that is not how things work. In the cut-throat world of Nigerian politics, loyalty is often a knife sharpened for one’s back.

In his bid to become governor, Shaibu has evoked the homeboy trope. A career activist and unionist who rose to fame during the heady days of student unionism in Unijos, he considers himself the quintessential homebred politician who not only knows where the pulse is in Edo State but feels it first-hand.  In this wise, Shaibu favorably compares himself to a certain favourite for the son of the Edo State governorship who needed a translator to commune with his kinsmen and spirits when he visited his  community.

What iniquitous offence did Shaibu commit to impel his impeachment? What has changed to make a pariah out of a man who has claimed to have bankrolled elections in 2016 and has not been challenged?

Obaseki and his stooges in the state legislature sure have no coherent answer. Shaibu’s fate sealed from the moment private disaffection over the next governor of Edo State spilled into public disagreement is a remaking of the impossible remit of the Nigerian deputy governor. An office hamstrung by the Constitution itself is often made impossible by the clownish tendencies of governors who act like emperors, and crave control of everything.

What is happening in Edo State is history  repeating itself. In 2010, as President Musa Yar’Adua dangled between life and death from the threads of a terminal illness, his closest aides and family members cared less for the president’s survival than to check his  inevitable replacement by the Vice President to the office. This was until death checked them all.

Ondo State also required death to ultimately disarm the bomb that was about to detonate in the state. Since 1999, deputy governors in  Zamfara, Oyo, Kogi,Ekiti, Imo, Lagos, Osun, Akwa Ibom and Bauchi have all been impeached for farcical offences. It is a battle that is never far away from government with the prudent question being where next.

It Is disruptive that a governor should spend his last days in office orchestrating the impeachment of his deputy rather than consolidating his legacy.

The clearest lesson for Shaibu and other deputy governors, may yet be that in a duel of big dogs, it is impolitic to show sharp teeth.

There is also a sense in which those who have treated Shaibu so shabbily are heedless and reckless students of history. Before he was re-elected in 2020 by the skin of his teeth, Obaseki had seen his political aspirations mortally threatened by the excesses of his predecessor Adams Oshiomole. With the Aso Rock door firmly shut, and the odds stacked against him, he turned to Edo voters. Having done nothing to distinguish himself from his do-nothing contemporaries on the Nigerian Governors Forum, his subsequent victory at the polls was part moral outrage, part protest.

Edo voters recognized a system synthesized to oppress and deployed their voter power to foil it. They may yet queue behind Shaibu as he seeks to shame his executive and legislative oppressors. But before they can, Shaibu may have to leave his the PDP lest fortune which fears the brave but tramples cowards under foot fail to foil his fate

But that he who latched on to the goodwill of Edo voters like a starved infant to his mother’s breast and was saved electoral humiliation in 2020 would now oppress someone who backed him to the hilt for nothing apart from showing ambition is another fraught lesson in the fragility of the human memory.

Kene Obiezu

keneobiezu@gmail.com