Opinion: Why are Dan Orbih and Ize-Iyamu waiting for a victory verdict that is unlikely?

by Idemudia Oviosun (PhD)

Chief Dan Orbih is neither new to political bashings nor sportsman enough to take a good licking and know he should walk away to fight another day. The importunate man has never even won a single election. He may or may not have won class captaincy back in the day while (if) he was a student, but even if he ever won a thing, those days are gone and political victory is now a bee in his bonnet, which is increasingly seeming elusive to him.

Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, lacking foresight, hindsight, second sight, and even shoring up his primary sense of sight with a sturdy-looking pair of forgettable spectacles, is following Chief Dan Orbih blindly on an at once bedamned and mock-worthy quest.

Both of them, in one word, are waiting for Godot. Now, here is the thing about Godot. The name belongs to a character, which gestated and was birthed in the fertile mind of Irish writer, Samuel Beckett sometime between October 1948 and January 1949.

The play was named ‘Waiting for Godot’ and had two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for someone named Godot. Throughout the play, they chattered endlessly, exhibited many a foible, speculated impracticably and wore bowler hats, all while waiting for a Godot that never came.

Both Dan Orbih and Ize-Iyamu wear hats. Not the bowler hat that was de rigueur at the time Godot was being so tediously awaited, but the yet regular kind of cap worn by the men of high circles in Nigeria, which transcends tribes and is just known as ‘the big man’s cap’.

Godot, to them, is a victory over Godwin Obaseki to be at the helm of affairs in Edo state and steer it to the rocks to doom it completely. They somehow presume that they won the September 26 2016 election in Edo, so they had a petition written, which an Election tribunal sat to hear and dismissed for lack of merit. Smarting from that beating, they forwarded the case to the Court of Appeal.

Prior to that, they sulked and threw tantrums, as if they had been made to stand in the corner for a while due to bad conduct, calling the judgement perverse and insinuating that the judiciary was just a proper bench of bad eggs, who had sold the judgement for some ‘shekels of silver’.

At the Court of Appeal, our Vladimir and Estragon in Edo enjoyed another resounding defeat, even worse so that the appellate court ruled that the election tribunal must be commended for a tidy job.

Now, unverified but seemingly valid claims have it that Dan Orbih and Ize-Iyamu have an ace up their sleeve. It emerged some time ago that both of them met with others of like political inclinations, somewhere in Port Harcourt, and agreed to save big for a major purchase of judgement.

The Supreme Court, that hallowed apex chamber of judicial pronouncements on cases, is the next point of call for PDP and Ize-Iyamu. After slandering the election Tribunal and being more subtle, but no less reviling of the Court of Appeal, they want to take the case to the court at the zenith.

If the reports are true that they want to purchase the judgement in much the same way the devil purchases the souls of men, then they will find they are erring. Their whimsical notion of the judiciary been a corrupt chamber is a myth. Yes, there may be some bad eggs, but no bad egg will risk their entire career on a case as glaring as the Edo Election Petition Tribunal.

The petition was a busybody one. It was made even worse when the petitioners and later the appellants, who are still waiting for a favourable judgement, abandoned their main reliefs in the petition and they started pursuing other cases such as accreditations and ticking to the left or right.

It was not also forgotten by the appellate court that there appeared a Law professor before the court both as a counsel to the petitioners and as a witness to give evidence. The Supreme Court will not forget that either. PDP killed the case before it ever commenced by writing a terrible petition, but they cremated its corpse severally with the numerous anti-jurisprudential conduct they exhibited throughout the case.

If Dan Orbih and Ize-Iyamu are expecting a favourable judgement for them so that they can loot and plunder the state, then they will find that they are waiting for Godot. As Estragon and Vladimir did, they will find that they are simply waiting for Godot.


Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

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