It is unthinkable but it has just happened. No one had thought such could happen to power drunk national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole. An ordinary ward chairman has retired a national chairman of a ruling political party in Nigeria from active politics. And that is the truth. We can see from Oshiomhole’s matter that the ward is more powerful than the national in their different perspectives. The national formulates policies for the ward but the person at the national can be reduced to rubbles by the person at the ward level.
Oshiomhole’s fall today was partly the handiwork of his ward chairman. Although Nigerians believe that the state governor, Godwin Obaseki, may have played a critical role in the action of the ward executives that led to Adams Oshiomhole’s travails, the ward chairman and his executives were instrumental in the fall of the mighty iroko. Oshiomhole’s fall is a fall too big. It was never anticipated. Oshiomhole must have felt that as a national chairman, there was nothing that would be impossible to him.
But his fall from the grace that held him up was the doing of a common man in the party. Not even a local government chairman nor a state chairman but a ward chairman, the second in the rung from the bottom. The first being the unit chairman. If the ward chairman had known that it would have led to this, he wouldn’t have taken that part, I guess. He may be thinking around that now. But he can’t reverse it again. It is now history. That issue has been sealed and settled. Oshiomhole is gone and may never return to the office of the national chairman.
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole must be thinking seriously about his actions now in his quiet moment. He didn’t dream of leaving politics at this time. He had risen to the pinnacle of success in politics but the office seemed to have overwhelmed him. He wasn’t careful enough. He was power drunk. He was talking too much. Leaders who know their onions do not talk like the way Oshiomhole was talking and arrogating power to himself. That is why not all offices are meant for everybody. Some offices swallow their occupants because the offices are too big for them to run. The influence and power they wield seem overwhelming to them.
Oshiomhole also may not have recognized the power of the ward executives. All through the period the matter lingered, no information came that Oshiomhole visited the ward executives and pleaded for leniency. He was only in Abuja issuing orders. Abuja actually belongs to nobody. It is the unit and the ward that belong to members of the party. It is the ward where the person is known. But Oshiomhole seemed to have jettisoned the power of the ward executives. And Obaseki allegedly utilized the ward executives and the hammer fell on Oshiomhole’s neck. And it broke him down. As it is now, it is difficult to gather the pieces together. The suspension has not even been lifted not to talk of one office or the other at any level.
The action taken again from the meeting of the national working committee at Aso Rock on Thursday put a final full stop to the political woes of Oshiomhole. The national working has been dissolved and a caretaker committee appointed. Even Victor Giadom who went the meeting as the acting chairman returned from the meeting as ordinary member, not even a member of the new caretaker committee.
