By Brown Odigie, PhD
POLITICIANS value power and know how to get it and keep it. The first rule of politics everywhere is about getting and keeping political power to satisfy self ambition and effectively reward those who help you to obtain political power!; it is not about the “public good,” or “the general welfare of the people.”
Obaseki and Shuaibu when the going was good
In the game of politics, political survival is best assured by depending on few people – the essentials – a small coalition of backers, to attain and retain office.
Managing these political essentials is a key priority in real politicking; it is of a higher importance than ideology, competence, character of individuals, and other moral questions including philosophical values and metaphorical abstractions of what ought to be.
Adept politicians devise various means of keeping and maintaining these essentials if they must continue to win elections, however it is conducted, and therefore keep political power.
Asue Ighodalo
The key factor in the Edo Governorship election was about who knows how best (between Governor Obaseki and Senator Oshiomhole) to manage political survival through adept management of the essentials – the coalition of backers; it wasn’t about Asue Ighodalo and Monday Okpebholo!!
It wasn’t a contest of ideas, character and competence of the candidates. Obaseki’s mismanagement of the essential coalition of his backers – those who helped him to obtain political power in the first instance cost/undermined Asue’s victory.
Governor Godwin Obaseki
A lot can be said of how politicians can manage political essentials in the game of politics and the moral question of what this might entails.
For adept politicians, the end justifies the means. It is in this sense that people think of politics as a bad enterprise.
However, in real politicking, bad behaviour is, more often than not, good politics. We saw a lot of “bad behaviour” displayed by the political gladiators in the lead up to the Edo election.
Combo of Oshiomhole, Obaseki and Betsy
To them, in the game of political survival, bad behaviour is good enough so long it enables them to attain what they set out to attain – to win the election and obtain or retain political power; thereby, satisfy their self interest, reward political essentials (coalition of backers) before any thought about the public good- the welfare of the people, if at all they have that in their calculation.
Understanding this simple logic is important to the comprehension of why politicians do what they do, and why governance is in peril in political systems where state institutions are weak and, indeed, captured by the same politicians in the pursuit of their self-interest.
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