It is perhaps the easiest choice to make in the five years that the Board of Editors of The Sun Newspapers has sat every December to pick the most outstanding Nigerian for the outgoing year. Unanimously, we agreed that the person the diadem of The Sun Man of the Year fits for 2008 is Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole.

•Adam Oshiomhole Photo: Sun News Publishing

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Why?

He had a massive army of people who voluntarily went to the polls in April 2007 to elect him as the new governor of Edo State. The powers-that-be cheated him, offering his electoral victory to a rival candidate, Prof. Oserheimen Osunbor of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It was daylight robbery in its crudest, most brazen form.

With such overwhelming army of supporters at his beck and call, what will an average politician do? He will tell them to take their destinies in their hands, fight for their rights.

Under a tyrannical and repressive regime like that of Olusegun Obasanjo, what do you think would happen? Armoured tanks will be rolled out, the people will be gunned down in their hundreds and thousands, and the rivers at Edo State will turn crimson red, flowing with the blood of the people.Armageddon.

Yes, it happened before, didn’t it? In the old Oyo and Ondo states, votes were stolen in the 1983 gubernatorial election. And murder and mayhem were unleashed, with the fire actively stroked by one of the governors who had been cheated. He went on air to broadcast to the people, rallying them to war. One man,one machete. One man, one gun, he told the people. Defend your votes with your blood, he charged them. And the states became killing fields, with sorrow, tears, and blood everywhere. It was one of the reasons the military struck a few months after.

But what did the irrepressible labour leader do? Adams Oshiomhole pacified the people. He mollified and told them do hold their peace, that he would fight for the restoration of the mandate they gave him, not with guns, bows and arrows, not with weapons of mass destruction, but through the courts.

Heated tempers were calmed. Hope kindled afresh in the breasts of the people who were raring to go, itching to prove that you don’t cheat a true Edo man and get away with it. Things were made worse because some people had been killed during the electioneering and voting. And they were Oshiomhole’s supporters.

Their only crime was that they sought a change for their state, a change from the slave camp of corruption, of retrogression, of degradation, of absolute absence of governance. Edo State was in absolute decay, in tatters, and they wanted a change. Edo was the caricature of what a true state should be, and they wanted a new dawn, a new era. But they lost their lives in the process. They did not live to behold the hope in the horizon, the ray of light at the end of the dark tunnel.

Yes, violence was on attractive option at that point for very many reasons. But Oshiomhole, and his party, the Action Congress, opted to go to court. And between April 2007 and March this year, it was gruelling, energy sapping.

In March, the Elections Petition Tribunal ruled. It declared that Oshiomhole, not Osunbor of the PDP won the April 14, 2007 polls. Wild jubilations erupted. The entire state rocked with frenzy. Paradise was regained. But not exactly. At least not yet. The usurper still insisted he won the elections, and so went to the Court of Appeal, which is the last and final bus stop in gubernatorial matters.

April, May, June, July… November. After what seemed an interminable period, the Appeal Court spoke. Oshiomhole was the true winner, Osunbor out you go!

And once again, Nigerians learnt that descent to anarchy, to the Hobbesian state of nature, can only make like brutish and short. In decent lands and climes, the judiciary exists as the last hope of the common man. That was what Adams Oshiomhole proved; and it is one of the reasons he is The Sun Man of the Year 2008.

The Oshiomhole phenomenon is made more profound by the recent ruling of the Supreme Court, which affirmed the election of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Nigerians, including justices of the Supreme Court know that there was really no election on April 21, 2007, when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) claimed Yar’Adua was elected. If there was any election at all, it was a parody, a travesty of anything that is decent and virtuous. Local observers said so, international groups also shouted it till their voices grew hoarse. But the Supreme Court now says the election is ‘upheld’.

In Edo State, the Court of Appeal was honourable enough to do the proper thing.

The justices saw the truth, and did the right thing. They knew that the Oshiomhole momentum was like wind, no one could stop it. Not the courts, not guns, not bazookas. It was immutable, inexorable, unchangeable. The people were solidly behind it, their wills, their hopes and aspirations were fully embedded in it. To declare otherwise was to commit hara-kiri, the kind of suicide the Supreme Court committed recently. So, they spoke ,and spoke well.

Again, see why Oshiomhole is our Man of the Year 2008. Can anybody upstage and torpedo entrenched godfathers unless God the Father was with him? We know the politics of Edo State, we know that it is a place where godfatherism festers, and is truly alive. No wonder the state was marooned, buried in underdevelopment and sheer backwardness. Yes, godfathers never allow the governors they install to function unfettered. The godfathers must call the shots, while the godsons act like dummies. It was what hindered and hampered the immediate past governor, Lucky Igbinedion, and the ones before him.

But when campaigns for the 2007 election began, we saw the diminutive labour leader, in his trade mark workaday clothes, confronting the entrenched system with nothing but his clenched fists. A David standing before Goliath with mere sling and stones. A fighter confronting an armoured car with dane gun. The godfathers would crush this puny man, people reasoned.

But at the end of it all, godfatherism took a licking. Backed by no higher power except the overriding power of the people, Oshiomhole emerged the popularly elected governor. Man with the lion heart. No wonder he told the crowd at his inauguration last month: “You and you alone, not godfathers, will determine who governs this state.” Bravo, brother.

A phenomenon called Barack Obama swept through America this year, running in the November 4 polls to become the first African – American elected president. Don’t you see some similarities between Oshiomhole and Obama? Didn’t you hear the crowd chanting Obama, Obama at the inauguration of the Edo State governor in November? Both are men of ideas,blessed with the gift of the gab. They have both crushed and crashed the old order, causing it to tumble and crumble. The depth of their minds and thoughts are admirable.

We know Oshiomhole’s antecedents. He emerged labour leader at a point labour unionism had been beaten, battered and bruised by years of military dictatorship. Before him, labour leaders were either compromised by military leaders, or browbeaten into submission. And Oshiomhole emerged in 1999 to bring fresh verve, fresh spirit and dignity into labour unionism. He not only brought back the respect and reputation, over the next eight years, he was to become the nation’s alternate president.

Imagine what would have happened to Nigerians in eight years of Olusegun Obasanjo’s despotism if a steely character like Oshiomhole was not the labour leader. Many times, he confronted Obasanjo eyeball to eyeball, and the government blinked first.

Many times, there were national strikes, particularly over the prices of petroleum products. And Oshiomhole was not your kind of leader who led from the rear, dishing out orders. He was always at the forefront, and got tear-gassed, brutalized, and arrested on many occasions. This only endeared him further to the people, and no wonder they gave him their votes massively in Edo State when he threw his political hat into the ring.

As governor and The Sun Man of the Year, we dare say the burdens on Oshiomhole’s slim shoulders are quite heavy. Daunting. Expectations from him are very high, and he can’t afford to fail. That would indeed be the mother of all failures. All the promises he made to the electorate in Edo State must be fulfilled. He must transform and translate them from the valley of despondency, despair, to the mountain of succour and sufficiency.

Their lives must transform in every material particular, and they must be able to count their blessings and even lose count. Mean task? Not by any means. Oshiomhole must not only stamp his footprints on the sands of time in Edo, but in future, when power would necessarily shift to the South-South, he must be one of those who will bid for the presidency. But morning shows the night. What becomes of his political future will be determined by what he makes of the opportunity he now has to touch the lives of the people.

As Man of the Year 2008, Oshiomhole joins the roll of honour of those who have been invested with the prestigious award. The maiden edition was given to Otunba Mike Adenuga in 2003 for the strides his telecommunications company, Globacom, attained, putting phones in the hand of every Nigerian at affordable costs

In 2004, the diadem went to Professor Charles Soludo, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, for envisioning a new banking order, and Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, erstwhile boss of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) got the honour in 2005 for his then commitment to the anti-corruption war.

In 2006, Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, the then Minister of Education was the awardee, for her far reaching reforms in the all – important sector, while last year, the joint winners were Governors Peter Obi of Anambra and Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers, for their belief in the rule of law in their quest to regain their seats as helmsmen of their respective states.

The official presentation of The Sun Man of the Year holds every February, at a grand dinner, which usually attracts people from all walks of life.

Two months from now, Gov. Oshiomhole will stand many inches taller, as he is invested with the man of the year award. Truly, nothing succeeds like success.