Opinion: The politics of confrontation

Opposition politics can be alluring if played without bitterness. One thing that cannot be easily taken away from EdoState is that she has a large stock of refined opposition politicians.

We search but in vain, any other state, where a sitting Governor can get the type of positive assessment that Governor Adams Oshiomhole got recently from a former two-time governor of defunct Midwest Region and Bendel State, Dr. Samuel Ogbemudia, a PDP stalwart: “Your Excellency, you are doing well. I salute your dedication, vision and loyalty, which are all you need… When the PDP members came to see me, I asked them how they came.

They said they came through a brand new good road. I said, don’t you think you should say thank you to Governor Oshiomhole who built it? They said their thank you will not go to Oshiomhole but to the contractor who built it and I told them that we should give credit to whom credit is due.”

The summation of the immediate past Governor of the State, Prof. Oseriemen  Osunbor, who openly admires Governor Oshiomhole, for doing for his people perhaps more than he would have done for them, is direct to the point:  “If we have a Governor who is developing the State, why should we complain?  The reason I am in politics is to touch the people. My interest is service to the people.”

On the debit side, though, there are those whose stock in trade is perpetual engagement in the politics of confrontation. Such see nothing good in any government. Put simply, they are iconoclasts of the worst order. In their inglorious trade, they employ all types of smear tactics, deliberate falsehood, mudslinging, character assassination and everything evil.

They are arm-chair critics who offer no alternative because they have none. Their grand design is to simply lay wait on government programmes with the sole aim of consigning them to the waste basket.

This is where Mr. Daniel Orbih is the undisputed heavyweight champion and leader of negative opposition in EdoState, nay Nigeria!

For too long, citizens of EdoState were inundated with the obvious falsehood that the Oshiomhole-led administration’s urban renewal programme was nothing but flower planting.

Even when previous narrow ravines in our cities were being transformed to six-lane autobahns, the administration was said to be planting flowers. And they have not told anyone when flower planting became a felony.

Again, everything is like the chicken which must come home to roost. Wittingly or unwittingly, their empty noise must also have a way of impacting on the administration’s projects and programmes.

The aesthetic content of the urban renewal programme, particularly the aspects that touch on flowers, may be extracted since a segment of the citizenry that is allergic to flowers must also be satisfied.

While men of goodwill were yet basking in the euphoria of the administration’s achievements in the past five years and mapping out plans for the years ahead, Orbih and his co-travellers were on air announcing that the administration has done nothing and achieved nothing. Whereas in his account of stewardship, Governor Oshiomhole carefully chronicled the numerous projects already executed as well as the works in progress, Orbih could not fault any of the numerous claims.

The truth is constant. Even when crushed to death, it must rise again. A living opposition would first acknowledge the achievements on ground that are verifiable and proceed from there to show what they would have done differently to bring about a better quality of life for the people.

But not this bunch that would vaguely assert that nothing was done. With their crude method of presenting what is as if it were not, they destroy themselves while inadvertently promoting the person they set out to destroy.

Oshiomhole is human, after all. He has never missed an opportunity to tell people so. It must be very painful for any reasonable person to see facilities provided at great cost to the tax payer being vandalised. Vandalism is still vandalism – be it on roads, bridges, pipelines, buildings, etc. Those who think otherwise must build their own houses and set them on fire.

Understandably, the Governor was visibly enraged when he met the walkway being vandalised. He has since admitted that he probably went too far in dealing with the suspect but it was clearly an act of provocation. He has therefore gone ahead to openly apologise to the woman who happens to be a widow.

Orbih still harped on the issue to score cheap political points. He says PDP will never tell a widow to go and die. This lifts the issue from the individual level to the corporate level of the political parties. He wants the woman to come and collect N250,000.

The question is, how does this PDP token Greek gift compare with the N100 million that the defunct ACN recently doled out to market women, out of which, perhaps, this same widow got her initial working capital?

Does Orbih just know that Nigerian widows are suffering? This is a height of insensitivity but we see it as a familiar route: recently, when concerned Nigerians were calling on Stella Odua to sit up in the face of the numerous plane crashes that beset the Nigerian air space, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, prematurely passed a vote of implicit confidence on her in a way that seemed to suggest that love of accidents is a cardinal point in the PDP manifesto. With them, crime pays; hence criminals and lawbreakers must be adequately compensated.

We believe in constructive engagement. The Ralph Naders of this world deserve an advance booking in heaven. These are haters of injustice and unbridled power. They criticise with a purpose, always offering viable alternatives.

We agree essentially with Nader: “Your best teacher is your last mistake.” But by all means, if you have nothing to offer, keep quiet rather than become a toxic waste!

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Read this article in the Vanguard Newspapers

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.