Some of Obaseki's campaign materials and Ads have been atrocious.

Take this campaign Ad for instance: A family getting drenched in the rain is first presented with brooms by a man who just alighted from a luxury Jeep. The broom is the symbol of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the intent of this Ad was to portray how the APC failed the people of Edo in the last four years. 

Because a broom is the last thing you require over your head in the event of a downpour, the same jeep returns to hand this family a couple of umbrellas. Exactly what they needed.

The umbrella is the insignia of the PDP. Happy and well covered now, this family soon transforms into a wealthy one and makes the transition from a ramshackle home to a posh one. 

“We all deserve a better life,” the Ad signs off. 

It looks like a pretty harmless campaign Ad and messaging until you realise that until June 16, 2020, Obaseki was the man with the broom in Edo state and the man riding the jeep.

Obaseki was elected Edo Governor on the APC platform on September 29, 2016 and was sworn-in on November 12, 2016. He's been in charge of the state for four years.

In portraying the APC as failing the people of Edo state in the last four years by handing them brooms in the pouring rain when umbrellas would have sufficed, Obaseki admits failure in that Ad, seeing as he was the man tasked with the job of making their lives better since 2016.

And why did the same jeep make a return? Absolute shambles of a concept. Who approved that horrible script?

“Make Edo Great Again (MEGA)” is Obaseki's campaign manifesto. That manifesto tells us that Edo wasn’t great on Obaseki’s watch in the preceding four years. You don’t make something great again if it was great ab initio. 

A governor who is running on his record shouldn't be anchoring his campaign on making something great again.

By running his re-election campaign with this MEGA theme, Obaseki is admitting that he failed to make Edo great in the last four years. 

Surely, the governor must have been handed several campaign themes before settling for MEGA? Why adopt something similar to Donald Trump’s MAGA acronym of 2016 when Trump was a newbie on the political scene who erected his candidacy on an anti-establishment pillar? 

How is Obaseki not able to see that if the APC failed Edo in four years, that translates to his own failures because he’s been an APC governor until June this year? 

Obaseki needs to ditch this campaign strategy and focus on his accomplishments in office since 2016. Show the people what you achieved in your time in office and tell them that if they hand you another mandate on September 19, you will do more. Simple as MEGA!

Mixed messaging and own-goals are the last foibles a political campaign needs, just days before voters take to polling units to decide the fates of the candidates.

As for the people on Obaseki’s campaign team, the governor needs to summon an emergency meeting with them right away and warn them about derailing his campaign from the inside. The infidels!!

These guys are on an own-goal scoring and hara-kiri spree and need to be stopped!

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*Pulse Editor's Opinion is the view of an Editor at Pulse. It does not represent the views of the Organisation Pulse.