Edo 2020: Governor Godwin Obaseki’s Landslide Victory, Is In Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s Laptop

By Favour Amako

Wait a minute! Is the victory of the embattled Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, in Kaduna or Lagos State?

This question comes as the unrelenting battle over who control the Dennis Osadebey Avenue, the seat of power in Edo State for the next years shifts to Bola Tinubu’s bedroom, the Political Godfather of Lagos State.

Incidentally, the real fight is not between the two rival parties, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. Rather, it is internal amongst top-notch members of the APC, which has since polarised the party.

The delegation that accompanied Obaseki to Lagos to prostrate to Tinubu to temper justice with mercy and give the Edo Governor right of first refusal were Governors Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano), Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (Ondo), Mai Mala Buni (Yobe), Abubakar Badaru (Jigawa), Adegboyega Oyetola (Osun), Simon Lalong (Plateau). They all went cap in hand begging Asiwaju for soft landing.

I know vividly the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, cannot be among the emissaries. He has declared recently: ” Tinubu is not my man”. He once boasted that he had the capacity to retire Bola Tinubu as the political godfather of Lagos State.

For me, instead of Obaseki relocating to Abuja devoid of Abba Kyari, and Lagos where nobody has the political courage to challenge the dynasty of Tinubu, I think he should packs his belongings to Kaduna State for a 3-day personal retreat with El-Rufai. Be rest assured that the diminutive Governor will give him a crash course on how to dislodge Tinubu and Oshiomhole put together. The strategy is in the Kaduna born Governor’s Laptop.

I remembered vividly, how Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media to President Muhammadu Buhari, shared the discussion he had with El-Rufai, ahead of the 2019 Presidential election.

He wrote: “Some months before the 2019 general elections, I ran into Governor Nasir El-Rufai in the Presidential Villa, as he was going in to see the President. We greeted warmly, and I asked if he could please stop by in my office on the way out. He promised to do so.

“What was my worry? The trend on social media, as to how the elections would go. I had a broader view of the reality, but I needed some reassurance. And I knew El-Rufai was analytical, and constantly had statistics at his fingertips. He’s not a first-class quantity surveyor for nothing.

“The Governor turned up. I unfolded my worries, and asked for his opinion. He merely opened his laptop computer, and shared the result of a scientific research with me.

“What did the research say? With large sample size from across the country, and painstaking State by State analysis, it stated that President Buhari was going to beat his closest opponent by millions of votes.

“And wait for this: the social media would account for just between 9 and 11 percent of the votes. And wait again: that percentage would not go to one party alone. It would be shared between the two leading political parties, the APC and the PDP. It turned quite prophetic.”

Oh yes! Prophetic indeed: I am rest assured that the magic wand has not failed. With his laptop, El-Rufai was able to win second term in 2019 despite choosing a muslim-muslim ticket. If Obaseki can reach out for El-Rufai’s laptop computer, the rest will be history.

With the way events are unfolding I do not know how Governor Godwin Obaseki plans to subdue opposition within to clinch the party’s ticket ahead this year gubernatorial election. Although, his foot soldiers are ranting, but what will the ranting ranters do. Most of them can not even deliver their families to their boss, more or less their electoral wards. Obaseki’s fate has been sealed and padlock by Edo political witches. The pendulum is no longer swinging favourably towards his direction.

My counsel to Obaseki is this:”Reach out for El-Rufai’s Laptop or become one term Governor. The choice is yours.”