•Benin elders, palace chiefs
endorse him
BY SIMON EBEGBULEM, BENIN CITY
Since campaigns for the 2016
governorship election kicked off in
Edo state, people have been asking,
what is the ‘Oracle’ saying? What is
he predicting this time? What is the
way forward after Governor Adams
Oshiomhole? The Esogban of Benin
Kingdom and the Odionwere of the
Kingdom, Chief David Edebiri is the
oracle of the Kingdom. Leading his
socio-cultural group, the
Etuedoseghe made up of farmers,
powerful Palace Chiefs, artisans, the
Esogban last Sunday finally endorsed
the candidate of the All Progressives
Congress (APC), Mr Godwin Obaseki
ahead the September 10
governorship election in the state.



was a week in which the APC
candidate exhibited good oratorical
prowess as he took his campaigns to
the Civil society groups, the NBA,
women and youths. Remarkably, the
Etuedoseghe, it would be recalled
endorsed Oshiomhole in 2007
despite the pressure from the PDP
then.
The Esogban whose part duty in
Benin Kingdom is partly to control
the activities of witches and wizards,
by ensuring they don’t cause havoc
in Benin Kingdom, also predicted
Oshiomhole’s landslide victory in
2012 re-election.
He said then, “though one of our
sons (Gen Charles Airhiavbere) is the
PDP candidate and he is running
against Oshiomhole, in this election
Oshiomhole is the candidate of the
Benins, he is our son and the gods
have said he will win with
overwhelming votes”. His
predictions came to pass after
Oshiomhole won in the entire 18
Local Government Areas of the state.
And prior to the formation of the APC,
the Esogban predicted the
destruction of the PDP at the
national level and went on to predict
Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in 2015.
It is not surprising therefore why the
PDP does not like him. But anyone
who knows the Esogban, when he
passes the message across, he
damns the consequences and of
course it always come to past.
And that is why last Sunday’s
endorsement of Obaseki by the
Etuedoseghe must be a source of
concern to the PDP. Some of the
Chiefs at the occasion included the
Obasogie of Benin Kingdom, Chief
Eduwor Ekhator, the Inneh of Benin
Kingdom, the Obazelu of Benin
Kingdom, Chief Osaro Idah, who also
is the state Secretary of the APC and
several other palace chiefs.
The Director General of the Obaseki
campaign organization, Osarodion
Ogie, the Edo South leader of the
APC, Gentleman Amegor led Obaseki
to the palace of the Esogban.
Addressing the elders and farmers,
Amegor said “We have come with
your son, with your brother with
somebody that we all know very
well who does not need
introduction.
What I want to tell elders is that for
almost eight years now we have a
son, Oshiomhole, leading Edo state.
We all know who Oshiomhole has
been, he has been a focused person,
he has been a wonderful guy,
Oshiomhole infact started from this
sitting room too. The man has
performed brilliantly well. Now he is
about to go and he looked at every
body and said this is the man I am
going to give the baton to.
The success Oshiomhole has
recorded, he owns that success to
our son, Godwin. If a man like that,
that we respect so much, can bow
and say all the successes I have
recorded this is the man behind it, I
think that is enough joy for all of us.
If you look at it from that angle, it
will be unreasonable, it will be
unfair for anybody to go and give his
vote to any other person apart from
Godwin Obaseki.
This is the time we have found a
worthy son, a good administrator,
we have found a man with an
excellent heart, we have found a
man with great knowledge, if you
listen to him, he might not make you
laugh but if you see the potency in
his speech then you will know this is
a great heart and a great brain”.
Endorsing Obaseki, the Esogban
narrated that “We have been
watching your rallies and the
mammoth crowd you have been
addressing. Generational crowd is
what you have been addressing. We
have some affiliate societies too
who sent representatives here. One
of them is the farmers union. They
cut across the whole seven LGAs and
Edo South. We have another big
organization that is affiliate to this
group, the traders who want to
better the lot of Benin by
establishing a big market.
We are not partisan in the sense that
we don’t attend political meetings,
we don’t have party cards but we are
not oblivious to the good work of
some political parties and the bad
works of some political parties.
Consequently, we have the right to
chose if those wanting a particular
thing are more than one. So
Otuedoseghe in a meeting held here
unanimously voted for the
endorsement of Obaseki, the APC
candidate. His predecessor
Oshiomhole knows about this group
and we supported him” he stated.
Expressing joy for the endorsement,
Obaseki vowed to protect both the
old and the young and promised
never to forget the support from the
prestigious Benin elders. His words:
“I want to thank all the palace chiefs
here today, the farmers, my mothers
and brothers. Today, I have come to
say thank you, to thank you because I
was the least person expected to get
the endorsement of all my people.
Eight years ago, when I decided to
come and help, the last thing on my
mind was coming to become
governor of Edo state after
Oshiomhole. Many of us decided to
come back home when Oshiomhole
became governor because we
started seeing a fresh hope for our
dear state. In fact we encouraged
Oshiomhole to come and run for
governorship of Edo state. We said to
ourselves never again in our history
do we have the sort of pestilence
that we had in our land when driving
to Benin from Lagos in a raining
season like this. Some of us will have
to put our feet on top of our steering
because our cars would be flooded.
So for us service to our people is the
number one priority.
“Today you can see that a lot of
things are possible in our state with
the able leadership of Oshiomhole. I
came to ask myself, now that we are
rounding up with Oshiomhole,
should we all just leave? Yes I am not
a traditional politician in that sense,
but I realized that we are at a very
critical junction in the political
history of this country and if we are
not careful we could miss it again.
Over the last forty years or more, our
politics have been dominated by oil,
we have been playing oil politics.
The politics was about how to share
the revenue from Abuja but that era
has come to an end. For some of us
we have sat back to reflect and
unfortunately a lot of political actors
today do not realize that. We sat
down and said this is the time to
step up, we have built roads, we
have recovered our state, yes we
have accomplished a lot but we have
only scratched the surface. There is
so much now to do. We are now
going to rebuild our civil service
because the PDP killed the civil
service in our state.
“The Benin empire is still great
today, that blood of our fore fathers
is still in our veins. We can work hard
to become greater again. We are
going to attract investments in the
area if agriculture, electricity,
logistics and in Edo North mining.
Because these four activities
constitute almost 60-70 per cent of
our GDP. For agriculture, we are
fortunate because we have a
tradition of commercial agriculture.
What we are going to do is to
encourage more large skill farming.
He continued: “Another area is that
we must fix our primary education.
Our people kept running away to
Europe because the education we
give them is so substandard.
If I am going to spend a hundred
naira on education forty of that
hundred naira has to be on primary
education. We have started the red
roof revolution, cleaned up the
infrastructure of our schools, now
school is attractive because the
schools we met, the one that the
PDP government left for us, if that
was how schools were then, I would
not have gone to school.
Now we now need to improve the
contents in our schools, train
teachers, give them high quality
training that was why I pushed that
we should convert Ekiadolor to
University of Education so we can
begin to train a whole new
generation of teachers who are
conversant with 21st century
technology and curriculum. If we get
our education right over the next
ten years you will be amazed what
will happen.










http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/08/edo-2016-esogban-benin-kingdom-predicts-victory-obaseki/

Story

I think so!

Tho the people are tired of APC govt and Adams oshiomhole,s rein cos of "abominable" taxation and mini-autocracy etc.

BUT

As far The master rigger is there Govn Adams Oshiomhole and incumbency is APC. OBASEKI MIGHT PREVAIL.

Come to think of it, Adams oshiomhole was taught the ropes of political rigging by the now PDP aspirant, Izeyamu during the formation period of ACN party Of which PO Izeyamu was a foundational figure.

Now I bet KARMA HAS COME TO HUNT AND THE CHICKEN HAS COME TO ROOST FOR PASTOR OSAGIE IZEYAMU.

"ALWAYS KNOW YOUR LEGACIES WILL SPEAK FOR YOU OR HUNT YOU IN FUTURE"

Pastor Ize Iyamu will just face his divine calling after losing to Obaseki