Owen Archy Oshiomhole’s Downfall: 6 lessons to learn I feel
sorry for Oshiomhole that despite his outstanding works as a
governor, he may now go down in history as a villain instead of the
hero status he deserved. Where did it all go wrong for him? We can
learn some lessons from his mistakes. 1. Do not take God’s grace
for granted Oshiomhole is no doubt a product of grace. For an
ordinary Tailor without even a primary school cert to rise through
the ranks to become NLC president, a state Governor and the
national chairman of the ruling party could only be grace at work
but when he got to the top, he forgot the hand that lifted and held
him, he elevated himself to the position of a god and started
bragging: “no man born of a woman can remove me…”, “I will give
Obaseki Ambode treatment… He became high handed and started
stepping on people’s toes. He went into overdrive, wielding the axe
on anyone who dared to confront him, masterminding electoral
irregularities with full blown violence and daring anyone to
challenge him… He abused the grace that lifted him. 2. Do not
underrate anybody One of our proverbs says: “if you wake up in the
morning and sees a fowl pursuing you, you’d better run because you
don’t know if it had grown teeth overnight”. When he was suspended
by his ward Chairman, he called him a local politician, a village
champion, an ‘ordinary’ ward chairman and refused to appeal the
suspension within the window provided by the constitution until a
federal high court in Abuja affirmed it, then he started running
helter skelter, looking for a last ditch intervention to save his
head until the appeal court gave him reprieve. He also serially
underrated the power of a sitting governor. 3. Pride goes before a
fall After the Abuja high court judgement, he did something
admirable; he humbled himself, called a meeting of the NWC and
apologized to everyone with the words “I have realized my
mistakes’. However, realizing your mistakes is not enough, he
obviously did not learn from his mistakes as evidenced by his
prolonged war with Obaseki and Oshawo. It was overhead pride to
think “how can I a whole chairman call these neophytes for
settlement”? A true father does that, sometimes you are at
loggerheads with your own children and because you don’t want to
burn down the house, you call them to yourself, air your grievances
and settle the quarrel. 4. Learn to retreat sometimes There is a
time to be brave and a time to be conscious. Only cowards keep
advancing in battles without retreating, sometimes we need to learn
the art of “winning by losing”, sometimes you need to learn to
retreat and re-evaluate the battle, your enemy and your potential
gains and losses. Always fight with your sense not your muscles.
One of our proverbs says: “if you are too sharp, you may cut
yourself in the end”, this is what has happened to him. 5. Beware
of praise singers Oshiomhole’s supporters did not help matters
either, they elevated him to the position of a god, they called him
head-swelling names; Oshiothunder, OshioLion, Oshiobuldozer,
Oshiowinner, Oshioquake, Oshiofire, the man who has never lost and
can never loss a battle and so many annoying names and in a bid to
justify the names, he shut his ears to good advise. The great Oduma
of Afemai music had advised him in his album titled “last tenure”
that there shall come a time you will look back and see no one
behind you but they don’t listen to good music, he preferred to
dance to “is a goal” and listen to those fair weather Afemai
musicians who campaigned for his adversaries at the beginning but
turned back to dedicate a track in every of their albums to him
after he had won the election. Sometimes learn how to listen and
you could benefit even from those who talk badly. 6. What goes
around comes around He did this to a lot of people; Saraki,
Oyegun,… just to name a few. He has simply gotten a taste of his
own pie.
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