Ofone!
By Sam Omatseye
Gov Godwin Obaseki, Governor-elect, Monday Okpebholo
At the best of times, he always looked like a man who did not sleep last night. But at 4.40 am on Sunday, Godwin Obaseki had murdered sleep, his own sleep. He could not prepare for church. His eyes were alert enough for sermons but not his spirit.
Sitting at the INEC office like a regular citizen, he crouched over his phone, his face quizzical. He did not lose a wink, did not doze or snore, was not tired. He lacked the ennui of a loser. He still nurtured hope.
He sat alone, and confused. He was suffering from a territorial crisis. Where was he to be? He was not supposed to be at an INEC office. It belonged to umpires. He was probably mistaking the word umpire for empire. His – an empire – was crumbling. INEC office was not his gubernatorial territory. But there he was; he, an interloper. He was supposed to be in bed. He banished his pillows. He was not antsy for a snooze. He could not nap because he had been caught napping at the polls. He should be at his party’s situation room, or at home as a receptacle of updates.
But he was at the situation room. However, his situation cut a pathetic pose. He stood, paunch forward, face morose, alone among people. He was looking at the last clock of a pride ticking away into oblivion. He witnessed it after he overstayed his welcome at the INEC office. The governor, amidst his police guards, was ushered out of the office like a regular tout, booed until he turned his scowl into a toothy smile, the most embarrassed smile in Edo. From the video camera, his cameo of a smile revealed some of the whitest teeth you could see anywhere. He might have wished the polls rewarded his dentition. Which is a contrast to one of his term-expired governor neighbours who tormented the television set with his set of broken incisors, neither white nor set but unsettling.
This was Obaseki, the peacock of Edo State. He was getting his comeuppance with his people on whose back he had betrayed, he had puffed, he had a subpar performance, capsized democracy with a rubberstamp house, tossed about his deputy, undermined the monarch in a revanchist plot, desecrated Bini symbolisms.
The people just gelded this same Obaseki. He had exhibited nervousness in the runup to the polls. He borrowed a book from his party’s notorious patriarch when he belched out the lingo of desperado. He promised do-or-die if his Asue Ighodalo did not win at the polls. But he had a bluster unlike the patriarch at Ota, who had an ex-soldier’s braggadocio and an appeal to the muscular use of force. Bravado is not enough for a third-world election.
You could use Bravado in the west, like his counter in the United States has done. All he did was say the word, and the army beat its chest and they stormed the Congress. And ever since, Trump’s army has been agile, angry and at war with the rest of America. And the others are afraid. The Owu chief had raw muscle, men, thugs, police and soldiers. After Obaseki’s little huff, the IGP pulled Edo State police commissioner and that was the beginning of his castration. He tried to recalibrate the phrase after a backlash, and that showed that he did not have his mentor’s mettle. The Owu chief never ate his words. He spat fire instead.
At the night of the election, APC top brass had begun to stir with pride. I called one of them, and he quipped, “Are you calling to congratulate me?” I wasn’t. Just wanted to confirm a video. Then I asked about the word Ofone, and I had not finished my sentence when he broke into pidgin, “Ofone naim be the song for Edo now.” He was too ecstatic for dialogue.
Ofone means it is finished. They mean it is finished for the arrogance of a man who did not know that democracy has an expiry date for every office holder. That he knew he commanded awe but he would be awe-struck by the time he was up. That real majesty is democracy but more so is time. Time does not respect anyone. As the bible says,”I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not.”
Fate is telling him that the Edo servant for eight years now departs, if not in peace, according to the laws of democracy and the people. His eyes have beheld the humiliation of the polls.
Today, he would be thinking many things, and perhaps for the rest of his life. He may not forget agony but he probably will outlive it. He will not forget Adams Oshiomhole. Why did he not show more humility or even understanding to the man who picked him from obscurity in Lagos, but he decided to pooh-pooh him. An act of betrayal.
He will not forget his deputy, Phillip Shaibu, who worked for him like a little boy, as a point man and even a bull dog. He did not afford him the courtesy of humane discussion even if he decided to pick someone else as his successor.
He might also contemplate the phrase “Edo no be Lagos.” He rallied his people against an outsider. Does he know that he was a Lagos pick? Now, for irony, he might also say to himself that Asue Ighodalo, like himself, is a Lagos boy, too. He beat Lagos but Lagos beat him back in the last laugh when he picked a Lagos boy like him. This time, Okpebholo the homeboy wears the crown. It is the pirouette of destiny, a revenge of history.
It is the way things end, a certain sense of destiny seems to work things to oust persons who always believe they know it all. He thought he could control time. But only God can. As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.”
He will also think about the election day. The failure of rational expectation. He could muse about how men plot festivals and end up with funerals. Like a sour dawn, like another line from Hamlet, “The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” It is this air of ironies that will plague Obaseki. Epic collapses are ironies. Federico Lorca’s play Blood Wedding was a nuptial mirth of dance and feasting until the tragedy. But Obaseki’s story is often comic.
When you saw him in public, he had an air of glory without purpose, a man who thought he had love everywhere but not enough. Now he leaves power after thinking himself a godfather. He realizes he is neither god nor a father of the throne. Okpebholo, who did not show any assumption of arrogance, has now bested his best man.
He will contemplate another line from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: “But man, proud man/Dressed in a little brief authority/Most ignorant of what he’s most assured—His glassy essence../Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven/As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens/Would all themselves laugh mortal.”
Vincent Akanmode, deputy weekend editor of The Nation, characterized the moment like a poet. Hear him. “Okpebholo won at the polling booth, Akpata in the social media and Obaseki in none.” I should add that Obaseki won in his fantasy.
The Nation Newspaper Ltd.