By Reno Omokri
My attention has been drawn to a statement by the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Adams Oshiomhole, in which he accused former
President Goodluck Jonathan of budgeting ₦5 billion to rig the Edo State gubernatorial elections which held on July 14, 2012.
I will now proceed to show, with facts and dates that this new statement is further proof that Mr Oshiomhole is a mentally unbalanced
man who suffers from multiple personality syndrome. The Edo gubernatorial election that Mr Oshiomhole referred to held on Saturday, July 14, 2012.
The very next day, the Independent National Electoral Commission declared Mr Oshiomhole as the winner of the election. After his victory was declared, Mr Oshiomhole said as follows:
“I am glad that Mr. President (Jonathan) kept to his words of assurance that there will be no thuggery, hooliganism and violence during the Edo Governorship election. He is indeed a statesman, a man
of honour, because there was adequate and effective presence of security agents on ground. I am impressed. What the Edo election has confirmed is that when the President and Commander-in-Chief put the
country first and he conducts himself as a statesman not just as a party leader, credible elections are possible.“
I urge Nigerians to Google the above statement by Mr Oshiomhole to ensure I am not misquoting him.
Adams Oshiomhole said the above words to journalists on video. Now, the same man who uttered those words is saying a completely different thing today. Is this not evidence of multiple personalities?
This double talk and flip-flopping is a pattern with Adams Oshiomhole and evidence abound on this.
For example, on July 20, 2018, Adams Oshiomhole said: “Governor Ortom is not going anywhere, he is a very prominent member of our party, and we appreciate his leadership in Benue.”
He further said of Governor Ortom as follows “He is a man of honour and he knows that once you move one step forward, you will want to take the second step to consolidate the first step”.
Then only a week later, on July 28, 2018, Mr Oshiomhole made a 180 degree about turn and said “I am relieved as national chairman, and I believe that the leadership of the party in Benue is also relieved
that Ortom has left the party and returned to the club he belongs.”
Mr Oshiomhole also said Governor Ortom’s exit from the APC “is good riddance to bad rubbish”.
How could Ortom be “a man of honour” in Mr Oshiomhole’s eye one week and be “rubbish” the next week?
I urge Nigerians to Google those quotations to ensure that I have not misquoted Mr Oshiomhole and then compare the two statements made within a week and use that as a yardstick to gauge the state of Mr
Oshiomhole’s mental balance.
Moreover, Nigerians will recall that Mr Oshiomhole met with various legislators in the National Assembly to persuade them not to defect from the APC, but after they defected, he said he “I will not miss
sleep for one minute” over the defections. Then again, on August 10, 2018, Adams Oshiomhole said “I have confidence in Speaker Yakubu Dogara” only for the APC under Oshiomhole to officially release a statement on Thursday, September 14, 2018, saying Yakubu Dogara “has no electoral value”. Yet, the same Yakubu Dogara delivered his LGA to the Peoples Democratic Party only a month ago.
With the above, should any Nigerian doubt that we have a mentally unbalanced man in charge of the All Progressives Congress?
To buttress this point, it will be recalled that Oshiomhole said in his statement about ex President Jonathan as follows:
“To be propelled from the dark anonymity of a mere local government councillor in the creeks of the Niger Delta to the marbled vaults of
presidential power in Abuja must appeal to those who believe in luck.” Former President Goodluck Jonathan has NEVER been a Local Government Councillor Or Chairman or even worked in any capacity in any LGA anywhere in Nigeria. It only shows the very low level of of Mr Oshiomhole’s mental capacity when he makes such unsubstantiated allegations.
Dr Jonathan was an academic in the Ivory Tower, then a public servant at the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) and then became a Deputy Governor, then a Governor, Vice President,
acting President and then President. If Mr Oshiomhole cannot get his fact right about a man who was President of Nigeria for five years and whose biography is a public
document, can anybody be surprised that the APC is collapsing under Mr Oshiomhole’s watch?
But if I may ask, what is wrong with being a local government councillor? Was Adams Oshiomhole himself not once a local representative of a textile mills union before he became Chairman of
the Nigerian Labour Congress? Shouldn’t such a person learn to be humble instead of looking down at Local Government officials? Yet he expects Local Government officials to vote for his party in 2019. A
party that looks down on them! Finally, Mr Oshiomhole said, “It is worth recalling here that in its 16 years in power, the PDP betrayed considerable hope.”
How can that be true when under the PDP, Nigeria became the largest economy in Africa and the third fastest growing economy in the world according to CNNMoney while under Mr Oshiomhole’s APC, Nigeria
suffered her first ever recession in 25 years and had the dubious distinction of being named by the World Poverty Clock as the World Headquarters for Extreme Poverty?
Under the PDP, Nigeria enjoyed 16 years of net job gains, but in December of 2017, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that 7.9 million Nigerians lost their jobs in just 21 months of the APC.
If this is not a case of the pot calling kettle black, then I do not know what else will be.
Reno Omokri is the bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years, and other books. Avid traveller. Tormentor of the APC.
