Ogbeide Ihama’s Shameless Visit to the Palace and the Oba’s Significant Question: Is This AI-Generated?

 

By ABURE, Pedro Anetor

No amount of propaganda can rewrite the truth. *No hurried visit to the palace can launder a tainted process into legitimacy.* And no manufactured figures, hurriedly stitched together like a badly edited script, can erase what the people witnessed openly at the field. *Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu won the APC senatorial primary in Edo South, and the desperate theatrics that followed cannot alter that political reality.* 

The recent visit by *Ogbeide Ihama to the palace of the revered Oba of Benin, alongside APC Chairman Jarrett Tenebe and a convoy of political scavengers masquerading as leaders of Edo South APC, was not a noble courtesy call. It was a calculated attempt to drag the sacred throne into the muddy swamp of partisan manipulation.* It was an effort to decorate a stolen mandate with borrowed royal dignity. *It was politics at its dirtiest-desperate, clumsy, and shameless.* 

Most striking, however, was the *Oba’s unforgettable and deeply symbolic question: “Is this AI-generated?”* 

That question landed like thunder in a silent valley.

It was not merely a casual remark. It was satire wrapped in royal restraint. *It was a subtle but devastating ridicule of the ridiculous figures presented before the palace.* In one piercing sentence, *the Oba exposed the absurdity of a result so detached from reality that it appeared digitally manufactured rather than democratically earned.* 

Indeed, how could any rational political observer believe *that Senator Neda Imasuen -* who reportedly could not even vote after being chased away by *state-sponsored thugs -* suddenly scored more votes *than Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, arguably the most influential grassroots politician in Edo South and one of the most followed political figures in Edo State?* Such fiction insults intelligence. It mocks democracy. It ridicules the very essence of party primaries.

The field told a different story. The atmosphere, the crowd movement, the alignment of delegates, and the glaring video evidence all pointed clearly in one direction: *Ize-Iyamu won convincingly. What happened afterward was nothing short of political pickpocketing in broad daylight.* 

To then carry such a controversial and disputed result to the palace, *while a formal complaint already sits before the APC National Working Committee (NWC), amounts to institutional disrespect. It is an attempt to hoodwink the palace into granting moral legitimacy to a deeply contested exercise.* That is shameful.

 *The palace of the Oba of Benin* is not a rehabilitation centre for electoral fraud. It is not a washroom where political actors cleanse stained reputations. *The throne represents honour, truth, and historical dignity. To exploit it in order to gratify cheating and reward impunity is both reckless and insulting.* 

The irony is tragic. *Those who should hide their faces in embarrassment now parade themselves with rehearsed confidence, clutching what many party faithful already consider a fabricated document.* Their actions resemble actors performing on a collapsing stage while pretending the audience cannot see the falling curtains behind them.

Yet, truth is stubborn.

 *The APC National Working Committee must rise above local conspiracies and self-serving manipulations. The NWC must do the right thing and declare Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu the authentic winner of the primary.* Anything contrary would not only damage party credibility in Edo South but could also trigger disastrous consequences in future senatorial and presidential elections. *God forbid that a party preparing for major national contests should reward political fraud over proven popularity and grassroots acceptance.* 

History has never been kind to usurpers. Temporary noise cannot silence enduring truth.

As Abraham Lincoln once said: *“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”*