By Sam Omatseye
Who would have thought that Philip Shaibu could anytime on earth be in stormy waters with his boss, the governor of Edo State? But here we have it. But the deputy peacock of the state and a courtier of Edo State Government House has gone to court. He is barred from meetings and mentoring. He can’t see memos and minutes. Godwin Obaseki’s ears are immune to the tones and tunes of his call. Shaibu’s phone hollers eight times but not a hello in return. He who was shepherd has become leper.
The man was silver of government cannot boast a medal. He is even worse than a cipher but something of a Lucifer. It is not what the rumour mill is saying. He confessed it. He wailed in the court. Obaseki did not only make him an outsider in government, he may be on his way out. The Golgotha called impeachment is looming.
It is not funny, if not tragic. Shaibu was, not long ago, Obaseki’s chief guard dog and enforcer, his matador, bouncer and muscleman. The troops responded to him as a herd to the sound of a lash.
Shaibu was a labour maestro, a darling of the worker. Hence he became a friend, follower and confidant of Adams Oshiomhole, the former governor of the state and one of the great labour mobilisers of his generation. He rewarded Shaibu by backing him to be deputy governor. Adams calculated that, with Obaseki and Shaibu in the saddle, he could go sleep. A nightmare ensued. Both boss and deputy ganged up against their benefactor. They wanted Adams to sulk while they sucked the milk of power. They made common cause until it is now common curse.
Shaibu set his face against Adams in the hope that Obaseki would be his eternal ally. But he is in the terrain of slippery slope called politics, and his blood now boils with the venom he spat on Adams. He was on top of the world when they were seeking a second term together. The streets churned. There was blood and fear.
They had a strategy. Make Tinubu the scape goat and assert Edo independence. With such a strategy, no one would remember that he had failed to deliver in education. The bad roads would not matter even if cars and trucks squeaked and sputtered over potholes. No one would ask if the finances lacked probity.
Asiwaju Tinubu had said Osagie Ize-Iyamu was a better offer. Obaseki and co invented a chant. Edo no be Lagos. It was beautiful as it was cynical. It was a war cry. And the electoral machine was on song. Obaseki became an unlikely engineer of Edo nationalism. He whose forebears betrayed one of Africa’s magnificent thrones and sold its soul to the white man in the fraught era of the Benin Empire. He had suddenly become the patron saint of ethnic prowess.
It was no more the agenda of Edo future. It was a rage against a phantom who wanted to take over the state. Asiwaju was not taking over the state when he staked Adams for eight years, when Edo team came to learn a thing or two from Lagos that even Obaseki is gleefully enjoying today. Edo na Lagos then. Sentiment upbraided virtue. No one was ready to address the issue, that Ize-Iyamu is an Edo man. He was the one on the ballot, not a Lagos politician who had been an acknowledged friend and defender of the state.
Yet the man who had not shown a pedigree of performance threw a wool over all. He became a hero. Shaibu helped with this narrative. But he was a mini-Adams in his day. He walked like him, talked like him, and of course, with his Khaki, he was a labour man in profile. He outfitted himself in that Labour attire when he dueled Adams and Ize-Iyamu. He preened like a peacock.
He was in the centre of many acts of chaos and violence. During the campaign, he received a rebuke from the Oba himself. That did not faze or restrain him. His boss, a member of the Obaseki clan, had no historic respect for the crown.
He was the chief rottweiler of the second-term bid. He spoke never to Adams but at him and over him. Adams was a yesterday’s man. He had used and tossed him.
He thought he would be a bigger man. He wanted to succeed Obaseki. He had performed for him. He probably wanted to be rewarded as Jesus said he would reward his apostles when he said: “You are those who have continued with me in my temptations. I appoint for you a kingdom and you shall sit on my right and on my left judging the 12 tribes of Israel.” Well, Obaseki, who always looks like a man out of wrestling ring rather than board meeting, is not so generous as Christ. Shaibu says since he told his boss he, too, wants to be boss, he had become a pariah. Obaseki regarded it as ambition overdrive, a romanticism of desire. He had probably set his imagination to work on how he too would act as governor when he studied Obaseki’s acts and pageants – in exco meetings, sitting with a leg up on executive couch, barking orders, bullying special advisers, receiving VIPs, fuming about Bourdillon or downing a glass of whiskey. To deprive him of official ostentations, Obaseki took him out of his misery by making him an outsider.
When Shaibu strutted to the government house, it was ba shiga. He met the defiance and stony stares of the security men who often bowed and worshipped him.
He thought he was the shepherd of Obaseki flock. Well, what describes him in Obaseki’s eyes is the phrase, little flock. It inverts what Jesus meant when he used the phrase for his apostles. Jesus employed the phrase with affection. Little did not mean little. Just as Conrad used the phrase ‘little flower’ for a romantic beloved. But in its stark definition, little means small. He is small in Obaseki’s eyes, too small to fill his shoes.
But more potent is William Blake’s lines on the little lamb. He asked: “Little Lamb/ who made thee/ does thou know who made thee?” Shaibu is now the one who forgot who made him until he became little lamb after acting like a “tiger burning bright in the forest of night.” One may ask, like poet Blake, did he who made the tiger make thee. Obaseki, who made him a tiger has now softened him into a lamb.
Now, rather than a chief apostle, Obaseki sees him as an apostate. If he thought they had an understanding, he forgot Obaseki is an Obaseki, and to make matters worse, he is mortal. “There is no point swearing oaths if you are a mortal,” wrote Sophocles. And Obaseki belongs to a breed of men in which agreements end in arguments. Shaibu is now the sort of humans Shakespeare described as “never loved until never worth the love.”
Reading Shaibu’s confessional is like imagining a surreal drama. It was as though he was crying for help. His big boss was calling for his guillotine. His court plea might have been titled: My Inquisition. But who will help him? It was reported that he had a meeting with Adams. What sort of meeting could that be? Did he dobale, as the Yoruba say? How low did he go? Remember Tolstoy’s words that “it is better to bow too low than not low enough.”
Is he asking his quarry to query his present boss? Is he trying to change ship and align with his former target – Adams – against his former ally – Obaseki? Is that not a lesson in life. He did not fight with humility a few years ago. Now, his humble pie must fill his mouth as he tells Adams “I am sorry.” He fought Adams like a beast; he is returning like a lamb. Maybe he is foreseeing his political end, and he seems like a dead man testifying against his own funeral, apologies to Sophocles.
Maybe he is in denial. He is not falling. Shaibu may be under an illusion like Emperor Valentinian III when he was informed of the slaughter of Rome. He thought they were referring to his favorite cockerel. He replied, “but I just fed it a few minutes ago.” Such illusions are necessary when one’s back is against the wall. Like our deputy peacock. But reality is more unflattering.