By Dan Osa-Ogbegie Esq.
There comes a time when Edo people must pause to ask a simple question: How does Comrade Adams Oshiomhole keep a straight face when he speaks? His latest interview, splashed across multiple national newspapers, was another theatrical monologue from a man who now survives politically by attacking Godwin Obaseki and romanticising Monday Okpebholo, a man he once swore lacked the competence, capacity or composure to be Governor.
Nothing in his interview was new. It was the same tired fiction, the same well-worn bitterness, the same envy-driven propaganda. Edo people know better than to be deceived by a man whose own eight-year reign was defined by noise, debt, propaganda, and obsessive personal aggrandisement.
Oshiomhole’s “ground-breaking” years: A masterclass in empty drama
Oshiomhole mocked “groundbreakings”, forgetting that his own government perfected the art of ceremonial sand-turning without delivery. The only ground he consistently broke was on his private real estate empire:
His multi-billion-naira Mobutu Sese Seko–style villa in Iyamho, per Chief Dan Osi Orbih; his Maitama mansion in Abuja and his castle at Okorotun, Benin City.
All constructed while Edo people lived in squalor, in broken hospitals, dilapidated schools and collapsing infrastructure.
If there was any “earthquake” in Edo, as he joked, it came from the bulldozers that worked night and day to erect his personal palaces while the state itself was neglected.
This is the same Oshiomhole who never employed civil servants, never employed teachers, never hired doctors or nurses, never recruited a single lawyer into the Ministry of Justice, never upgraded a hospital, and never built a modern public institution. His idea of development was to wear khaki, shout at contractors, repaint rusted roofs, and pose for photographs.
The myth of Oshiomhole’s competence Vs the reality of Obaseki’s transformation
Oshiomhole’s hatred for Obaseki is now a political case study. It is the resentment of a man who recognises that Obaseki succeeded where he spectacularly failed.
Where Oshiomhole failed
Could not bring Shoprite to Benin; instead erected a shameful billboard on a flooded former school site; attracted no foreign investment—unless we count the Cape Verdean woman whose tenure in Edo ended abruptly just after he was ousted as APC Chairman; failed to build the five-star hotel he loudly promised; failed to deliver a modern conference centre; failed to industrialise Edo; failed to reform any sector sustainably and drove away the petrol depot at Ikpoba Hill, Benin City, together with the ancillary businesses around it because of his infamous frail ego.
Where Obaseki succeeded
Delivered the five-star Radisson Hotel and a world-class International Conference Centre, now anchoring Edo’s tourism economy; attracted Tolaram Group—Africa’s largest FMCG and logistics conglomerate; enabled expansion of Artee Group (Spar/Park’n’Shop) in Edo; established the Benin Enterprise Park in partnership with global development consortiums; expanded Ossiomo Power, giving 24/7 electricity to government institutions and private estates; attracted new digital and tech infrastructure, including Amazon-linked cloud and data ecosystem partners; brought major agribusiness investors – Saro Africa, Summit Agro, Farmforte, M40, Amagroof – among others; supported downstream industrialisation including the Edo Modular Refinery; through EDPA, secured Mixta Africa to deliver modern housing estates and actually employed teachers, doctors, nurses, tech specialists, civil servants, and emergency professionals—through the most competitive recruitment processes in Nigeria.
EdoBEST is easily West Africa’s leading basic education reform, praised globally and studied by several states and international agencies.
Oshiomhole’s claim that schools lacked electricity is ludicrous coming from a man who left them in ruins and even allegedly presided over the burning of the Ministry of Education, which Obaseki later rebuilt into a modern education hub—now ironically showcased by the APC government he defends.
The Gelegele and AAU fabrications
Oshiomhole’s claim that Gelegele “shifted when it rained” is desperate comedy. What did he do about Gelegele in eight years? Nothing. Not even a feasibility study.
He now praises Okpebholo for “reviving AAU” with ₦500 million subvention, conveniently forgetting that he himself destroyed that institution by starving it of funds while creating a rival university in his village, situated opposite his Iyamho mansion. Obaseki inherited a financially rotten AAU; a disaster Oshiomhole incubated.
The MOWAA Circus: A committee of the bitter
I genuinely laughed when I saw the committee Monday Okpebholo assembled to “probe” MOWAA. It is filled with politicians whose bitterness towards Obaseki is legendary. Men who have waited years, like Shakespearean villains, to extract their pound of flesh.
Their motive is not truth.
Their expertise in museum governance is zero.
Their qualification is simply hatred.
Yet this is the committee Oshiomhole wants Edo people to trust.
The reality: Oshiomhole and Okpebholo are two sides of the same faulty coin
Oshiomhole’s frantic attempt to whitewash Okpebholo’s catastrophic first year exposes only his fear. He wants Edo people to forget that APC governments, past and present, have paralysed reforms, reversed progress, and dragged Edo backwards.
Obaseki left behind a functioning state. Okpebholo is the one abandoning it. Oshiomhole is merely trying to launder his protégé’s failures after ₦236 billion spent in ten months with no coherent development plan.
The last word
Oshiomhole calling PDP leaders “ancestors” would be amusing if it wasn’t so pitiful, especially from a man whose political relevance expired the day he was chased out of APC national leadership like a maggi thief in Uzairue market. He should take heed so he does not return to the post-APC Chairmanship nothingness that followed his unceremonious removal as APC Chairman.
The PDP is however re-energised, reorganised and aligned with the people to retire the APC from both state and federal levels. Oshiomhole knows this. His panic-laced interviews are simply the cries of a man watching the end of his political era.
He may shout, sneer, mock, and invent stories. Edo people have moved on from his drama, and no stage performance, however loud, can save Oshiomhole or his APC from what is coming.
Dan Osa-Ogbegie Esq. is the
Publicity Secretary of the PDP in Edo State
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