Philip Shaibu: Lessons for Deputy Governors
Philip Shaibu has been impeached as the deputy governor of Edo State and replaced by 38-year- old Omobayo Godwin. He has declared his impeachment illegal, but until a court of law follows suit, such a declaration would ȱ¢ȱȱęȱȱȱ ȱ deputy governor.
In Nigerian politics, the heads that are reared up too soon are swiftly cut off and served in salomenic style as the prize for ambition in a gathering of power. Whenever deputy governors have replaced governors, it has been a case of restraint, and sometimes helplessness. Otherwise, it is only hostility that is displayed. That hostility now haunts Shaibu.
Since he indicated his intention to become governor, he has become the number one enemy to power in the state. Godwin Obaseki, the governor, has been open in his opposition to Shaibu’s bid. Obaseki’s grouse that Shaibu did not tell him has quickly become fierce opposition to his bid in all respects. It is a strange case of a governor being in the opposition together with the legislature, all arrayed in battle against one man.
As the theatre has unfolded in Edo State, turning theatrics to weapons in one of Nigeria’s most politically conscious states, the impossible fate of a deputy governor who aspires to be more than a figurehead has been laid bare.
Snippets from Shaibu’s side of the story which have come more out of compulsion than actual consternation or contempt betray feelings of betrayal. Having sunk his resources into a joint ticket, he feels he should now be the first name on what is a testament to its success story. But that is not how things work. In the cut-throat world of Nigerian politics, loyalty is often a knife sharpened for one’s back.
In his bid to become governor, Shaibu has evoked the homeboy trope. A career activist and unionist who rose to fame during the heady days of student unionism in Unijos, he considers himself the quintessential homebred politician who not only knows where the pulse is in Edo State but feels it first-hand. In this wise, Shaibu favorably compares himself to a certain favourite for the son of the Edo State governorship who needed a translator to commune with his kinsmen and spirits when he visited his community.
What iniquitous offence did Shaibu commit to impel his impeachment? What has changed to make a pariah out of a man who has claimed to have bankrolled elections in 2016 and has not been challenged?
Obaseki and his stooges in the state legislature sure have no coherent answer. Shaibu’s fate sealed from the moment private disaffection over the next governor of Edo State spilled into public disagreement is a remaking of the impossible remit of the Nigerian deputy governor. An office hamstrung by the Constitution itself is often made impossible by the clownish tendencies of governors who act like emperors, and crave control of everything.