Recent history has Godwin Obaseki in the media for all the altruistic reasons a person can think of. Last week, he decided to describe former governor Adams Oshiomhole as a traitor, who betrayed God and betrayed the party. Armed with the false confidence of the office of Governor of Edo State, the stargazing, ceiling-peering governor now suffers from self-induced amnesia. Briefly, some unorthodox treatment for this forgetfulness.

Stuttering, halting, seemingly unsure of himself and manifestly diffident, Godwin Obaseki made his first speeches as Governor of Benin. Subsequently, he ditched the diffidence that characterised his lack of confidence and developed a shifty, roving, knavish eye, masking it behind an unassuming countenance. His rite of passage had been completed as a true Obaseki, an unmistakeable descendant of the traitor, Agho (Ogbeide) Obaseki. Some well-known history.

In 1897, the marauding British sacked Benin and deposed Oba Ovonramwen. Chief Agho Obaseki, originally from Agbor in Delta where he had got into a kettle of fish for consorting or trysting with another man’s wife, organised the defence of Benin. He would later be appointed as the instrument of British imperial rule (indirect rule) in Benin, promoted in violation of native law and customs to the position of Iyase of Benin, and would give the son of Oba Ovonramwen, Eweka II, agony and misery as a king. This is documented history, not fabrications to frighten errant princes on the ills of befriending the wrong man.

His descendant has surpassed his record. Judas Iscariot grew penitent shortly after betraying Jesus of Nazareth; he could not sustain his treachery. Agho maintained a hardened stance, forgot that he was in trouble for his profligacy with another man’s matrimony, from which he was rescued by Oba Ovonramwen, betrayed the same Oba, and coldly went toe to toe with the Oba’s son, Eweka II.

Godwin has also forgotten that he rode on the shoulders of Adams Oshiomhole to win the same party primaries he is now doing everything in his fast fading power to stop. The fire of Adams Oshiomhole enhanced his dim light and he was gradually accepted by the APC as their candidate. Upon appointment, he betrayed the party quickly by banishing them from setting foot in the state’s Government House “for party affairs”, suggesting that they had turned the Government House to a bank.

Now, he has turned round to betray the trust of the man who personally fought for him to assume office. The campaign was “continuity”. Oshiomhole was worried that his achievements, projects and plans for Edo State, which saw the state grow in leaps and bounds would be discontinued. Who better to continue the work than the halting economic adviser, who feigned a lack of interest in holding office?

The fruit never falls far from the tree. Godwin’s traitorousness makes Agho’s seem like child’s play. He has summoned the gut, himself a traitor, to describe his benefactor as a traitor. He has embraced the dark arts of state-wide conning, and brayed and lied about an altruistic heart for Edo State and schemed and connived, begged, kneeled and fumed against Adams Oshiomhole, like a child before his father. No more of that serpentine conduct. The mantle of power is about to be taken away from him and he has revealed his true, unwise, two-timing double-crossing self. He is lost to the people and the party.