THE CLOUDS ARE GATHERING
My fellow Edo citizens, members of the press, leaders, and representatives
of civil society organisations, it is with a heavy heart laden with righteous
indignation that I address you today regarding the desperate,
undemocratic, and fascistic actions being employed by the incumbent
administration to undermine our campaign and silence our voice—the voice
of the people.
Over the past few days, we have witnessed a coordinated, premeditated,
and insidious assault on our constitutionally guaranteed rights to free
speech, political expression, and the fundamental tenets of democracy
itself. Billboards that I, as a law-abiding citizen and a gubernatorial
candidate, legally paid for and erected across the length and breadth of
Benin City have come under attack from the Local Government Areas, who
are agents of the incumbent governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki.
In Oredo Local Government Area, two of the his billboards were viciously
vandalised, defaced, and ultimately torn down, with explicit threats of more
removals to come the governorship candidate of the labour party lamented.
The situation is equally dire and unacceptable in Ovia
North East, where two more billboards bearing his visage and campaign
messages were mindlessly destroyed by these merchants of anti-
democratic forces. In Ikpoba Okha, his campaign team has received
unambiguous threats that billboards in that area will also be targeted
for elimination.
The labour Governorship candidate lamented these are not the actions of a democratic
government secure in its mandate, popular goodwill, and record of
accomplishments in office.
No, these are the desperate, last-ditch tactics of
an intolerant regime terrified of the winds of change blowing across our
dear state—a regime paralysed by the fear of the people’s burgeoning
yearning for a new direction, a new vision, and a new era of progressive
and inclusive governance.
By resorting to the unbridled destruction of my campaign materials—
materials that he has legally and legitimately paid for with hard-earned
resources—Governor Obaseki and his handlers have clearly shown
themselves to be anti-democratic forces intolerant of divergent voices,
dissenting opinions, and the fundamental principles of pluralism that
undergird any true democracy worth the name.
They are laying bare, for all to see, their disdain for the rights and freedoms
that generations of Nigerians have fought, bled, and died for—the
sacrosanct rights and freedoms that serve as the bedrock upon which our
democratic edifice is erected. By their actions, they have demonstrated a
callous disregard for the rule of law, due process, and the sanctity of our democracy.