By Tony Erha
Edo State governor, Senator Monday Okpebholo, had often declared that the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will deliver 3.5 million winning votes for the reelection bid of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the 2026 Edo presidential election. But, numerous political observers, APC opponents, who dismissed it as thoughtless and unrealistic gaffe, also tendered it a cheap political talk.
But, to many persons, Okpebholo, the ‘homeboy’ from a once rustic Udomi village, in Esan Central Local Government Area of the state, there is a somehow supernatural demeanor to his reticence, endurance and predictions. And long after he made the 3.5 million presidential votes’ expectation, things seemed to have been tilting to the prediction, when Edo followers of opposition parties, have been trooping to cross over to APC.
But, many observers of Edo slippery politics believe that it was too early to predict Tinubu’s landslide winning of the state, if past unpredictable election’s upsets in the state, were anything to go by. This is more so that the state is a unprompted stronghold of voter’s revolt, where groups and voters like the ‘Obidients’ transmogrify.
Winning Edo’s majority votes for Tinubu, where voters are suspicious and unfazed, more so that no APC presidential candidates has ever triumphed, seems a mirage. There are also the economic downturns, untold hardships, insecurity, and other socio- political problems, which were ballooned in Tinubu’s outgoing first tenure, as they are tangible obstacles that ordinarily weakens his chances in Edo presidential election. Still, the first and second cases do not seem to pose the greatest obstacles.
Governor Okpebholo’s amplified hope for 3.5 million votes for Tinubu, may waste away due to the inconsistent leadership, backstabbing, and listlessness that permeate his party chapter. The APC chapter, although professes to ‘progressive doings, is actually lacking. Edo APC looks anti-members and simply can’t manage its success!
“Experiment with disintegration” is an evidential term that portrays the most threats to APC and President Tinubu, toward scoring the required winning streak in Edo, having failed in the 2023 election. Prince Tony Momoh, the late stalwart and midwife of the APC coalition, had coined this ‘negative’ book-title.
Momoh, a seasoned journalist, prolific writer, and former Information Minister, was of a blue blood from the Auchi sacred kingdom of Edo State. He also had extended family root at Ikabigbo, a community closed to Auchi. Momoh’s title and his Ikabigbo sub-urban root are both connected to Emperor Jarret Tenebe, the psychedelic chairman of the state’s APC, who is also an indigene of the same community.
The “Experiment with disintegration” title underscores the ingenuity of a sleigh hands, ruining a party crudity – incivility to its opponents, and respected Edo APC leaders, particularly the latest explosive utterances. Tenebe holds a knife that cuts Edo APC asunder – causing it needless crisis.
In anger, Tenebe had lashed out that in the 2027 elections in the state, his party will not risk giving its tickets to such categories of candidates that the Edo APC calls “serial loser”. In his further remarks, which went to confirm the fears of numerous Edo APC members, that the parties primaries were going to be stage-managed, Tenebe, who spoke on a live interview of the TVC News, reasserted as thus;
“Candidates with a track record of repeated losses that are likely to continue in that pattern are risky choices for the party. To that end, APC leadership in Edo State is taking extra caution in deciding who receive our tickets. So far, only President Tinubu and Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole had been endorsed”.
When the ‘head and hairs” are mentioned amongst peers, to the extent that it’s overtime repeated, it’s an unfortunate innuendo that belittles the baldhead in the midst. In Edo, proverbs are better expressions to mocking the wise, knowing very well that he will readily interpret.
At the instance, when Tenebe blurted, incensed APC faithful and political pundits, got the rude joke and had gone wild. Now, there is widespread vehemence that the Tenebe’s utterances were unkind, unfair, and degrading to the personality and lawful senatorial aspiration of Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, a long serving stalwart of the state’s APC, who is about the only aspirants, in a crowd, that had actually vied and lost in consecutive governorship elections, held in the state.
Whilst the unwarranted abuse of Ize-Iyamu rocks the foundation of the party, tempers fly, the party is being disorganised within and outside, where further puzzling questions are asked. An insightful writer, P. Michael, wrote in the Nation Focus online newspaper of April 30, 2026;
“At a time when discipline should define the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State, a troubling pattern of internal friction has emerged. While Governor Monday Okpebholo is busy building bridges, State Chairman Jarrett Tenebe appears to be burning them. The question must now be asked: Is the party leadership working with the Governor or against him?”
Also citing the Tenebe’s usual verbal attacks as a self-induced affliction that may wreck the party’s fortunes, the APC Diaspora Media Group, Edo State Chapter, wrote an open letter to President Tinubu, seeking his intervention in the Edo APC crisis, as lavishly reported in the Punch newspaper of 21 April, 2026.
The group, claiming over 1,800 members across countries and a formidable influencer of elections in the state, also frowned at a similar verbal attacks by Tenebe against notable Edo APC figures, like Senator Adams Oshiomhole, and Minister Abubakar Momoh, which it described as “unguarded and disrespectful’.
Dr. Kelly Odaro, a political observer and public affairs commentator, wrote;
“At this critical juncture, what the Edo South people require is not political disparagement, but the politics of purpose – leadership anchored on unity, mutual respect and sheer determination to secure s stronger voice for the district in the corridors of national power”
The usual feuds that wreck the animal kingdom is when the squirrels, because it’s given the collective power to climb, arrogate that the oil palm nuts is exclusive preserve of animals of the tree tops and the birds of the air, where the squirrels do not consider for the rabbits of his rodent family.
Are these not the same Tenebe and Ize-Iyamu, who stood the ground for the realisation of the governorship bid of Senator Okpebholo, when it mattered, with a upsurge opposition against his ambition? Politics is strange, and its players are strangers to themselves. Indeed, politics is a traitor, who betrays his friends of yesterday, on the platter of selfish interest, over the bonuses of positions.
The tragedy of human affairs is that a man is not born without avowed hatred. That’s why a yes or no by others, shouldn’t be taken just so, unless one finds it to be yes or no. In politics people are recruited to hate people.
So therefore, it is not funny whilst hate is massed up for a single person created by God – Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu. Many years ago, a campaign of calumny was intensified against him, making him to lose a gubernatorial election. The very orchestrator of the discrediting propaganda later had owned up that it was all lies and sought for public-forgiveness. When the same orchestrator though Ize-Iyamu be placated with another mandate, instead, the public again turned him down.
A man can’t be at the mercy of political bile and afflictions all the time, as it’s become a disturbing pattern, which takes the turns against a personality from a particular senatorial district of the state, to frustrate Ize-Iyamu’s political ambition.
The Edo populace is presently entrapped in a road intersection, only similar to the biblical Rehoboam, who, like the Almighty Tenebe, the Emperor of Edo APC, who has threatened to exacerbate on the people, the prolonged yoke of the erstwhile People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Let it be known that Tenebe will also be applauded if he does well.
A political dark cloud is gathering over the state, particularly in Edo South, said to form the highest votes aside its two other districts. It is said that the travails of Ize-Iyamu is borne out of the mischief by certain powerful individuals, to install a rubber-stamp senatorial candidate, so that the clique continue to hijack federal patronages, as they had hijacked the three ambassadorial appointments meant for the state’s three senatorial zones.
It is imperative that Edo APC hold a direct senatorial primary election, where all aspirants, including Ize-Iyamu, will have to sweat it out.
Interestingly, in the Benin (Edo) cosmology, a name given to a child is instructive, although the uncanny world may try to twist it. ‘Idemudia’, an Edo name, meaning “one is man when he falls and rises”, can’t be given to one who falls and never rise.
It is also significant that ‘Osagie’, Pastor Ize-Iyamu’s first name, connotes a child sent by God to do great things.