Edo 2024: The folly in Afegbua's futile attacks

The All Progressives Congress (APC) is filled with interesting characters that have, with their actions and utterances, become even more irksome since their misadventure in selecting a mute and incoherent candidate to fly the party's flag in the September 21 governorship election.

I read with utmost disdain and disappointment the utterly preposterous, mischievous and most irresponsible comments by Kassim Afegbua, a pathetic traducer and fly-by-night penpusher, wherein he attempted to disparage the outstanding performance of the Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, in the last eight years.

But come to think of it, who is Kassim Afegbua in the APC campaign. A consultant? Why should he be taken seriously? He is just working for the crumps that he is being paid by the APC campaign team. There is no reasoning or ideology behind his poor and jaundiced scribbling.

In the hogwash which was a clear reflection of his muddled thinking, Afegbua made his lack of character and intellect bare, while displaying his crass ineptitude and insensitivity to the plight of the people of the State, and indeed all Nigerians over the excruciating pains and hardship inflicted on them by the failures of the APC-Government at the centre.

Rather than commend Governor Obaseki for the people-oriented policies to ameliorate the sufferings of the people in the light of the current realities, including the Edo Feeding Programme in which over N2.2bn has been made available to Christian and Muslim leaders to cater for the most vulnerable in the State, Afegbua is busy chasing shadows, spurning completely false, baseless and malicious allegations over the rebagging of non-existent Federal Government allocated rice.

For Afegbua, the attack and looting of bags of rice on August 1, 2024, at the resident of a vendor contracted by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) for the Edo Christian Feeding Programme was an ‘eye opener,' which further buttressed the vacuity in his reasoning. If Afegbua really meant well for the people of the State as he claimed, he should be leading the charge, calling out his representatives at the National Assembly and others appointed by the APC-led Federal Government to make clear and more factual clarifications about the Federal Government’s Feeding Programme and how the supposed bags of rice were allocated and distributed.

But no, Afegbua’s selfish interest and desperate quest to justify his pay as a consultant to a comatose party and unmarketable candidate has made him lose his capacity to reason factually and critically, leading to his self-seeking attack on the governor.

We all know Afegbua for who he truly is. His only patriotism and loyalty is to mammon. He is an avowed hireling of the defanged, defeated and disgruntled gang of politicians who are angered that Governor Obaseki has denied them access to the people’s treasury and have now resorted to propaganda and campaigns of calumny to discredit the governor and regain access to the purse in order to continue their opulent living and plundering of the people’s resources through their deadbeat candidate, Monday Okpebholo.

This is the only reason he has lowered the bar of commonsense, coming with deep-seated rage and throwing caution to the wind in his most recent futile effort at strawman's fallacy.

For him, it is first, anything to fill his pocket, which has been dry for some time now, having been out of government since 2016 when he served as commissioner to the then governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. Hence, selling a deadbeat candidate who doesn’t have the faintest grasp of the idea of governance to Edo people to Edo people means absolutely nothing to him.

And with his new role as the Media Consultant to the Edo APC Governorship Campaign Council, he is working so hard, cobbling together inconsistent sentences and advertising his jaundiced reasoning through his disjointed pressers, with the hope to position himself for another chance at the people’s patrimony if by any chance his party and paymasters get to the gate of Dennis Osadebey Avenue. What an ignoble role.

But the fact remains that Okpebholo, the candidate of the APC is and will remain a bad sell and Edo people will not allow themselves to be governed by a dunce when one of their best minds, Asue Ighodalo is on the ballot.

Afegbua can continue living in a fool’s paradise, lying all to himself to satiate his gluttonous appetite while all Edo sons and daughters who want the best for their State and have witnessed firsthand the bold and impactful transformation of their State in the last eight years under the leadership of Governor Obaseki come out on September 21 to secure the victory of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the governorship election so as to guarantee the sustainability of these remarkable progress made in these past few years.

Ewere, a public affairs analyst writes from Benin City