Just a few days ago, spokesman of the campaign organisation of the Peoples Democratic Party in Enugu State, Nana Ogbodo, issued a press statement in which he condemned what he described as calumnious campaigns against candidates of his party, by the opposition.

Ogbodo in the statement, released apparently in response to a trending video, themed “Ego Ndi Enugu” issued both warnings, threats, and appeals for campaign rhetoric to be based on issues rather than name-calling.

In my initial response to the veteran PDP spokesman’s statement, I did remind him of how guilty he and his team is of all that he was attempting to project to the opposition, and in doing that, I specifically mentioned the names of two particularly notorious members of the PDP team, whose only brief was to contrive fake news and malignant propaganda against the Labour Party candidates in Enugu.

While the ink was yet to dry on the paper bearing Nana Ogbodo’s press statement, Reuben was back at his hideous best with a press release suggesting that Barrister Chijioke Edeoga, the Labour Party Governorship candidate in the state had, in his Christmas message to the people of Enugu State, accused the presidential candidate of the party, Peter Obi of neglect. Reuben, in the same press release, also accused Edeoga of threatening reprisals against Fulani following the serial dastardly killings of innocent people in Eha Amufu, Edeoga’s ancestral home.

Many would wonder why the name Reuben Onyishi is featured here as the author of this rather unfortunate, unintelligent, and criminally insensitive press release, especially when it did not bear his name as the author. We live in a world of technology and tracing articles to IP addresses has become easy, and although this vermin hides behind his fingers, using multifarious fake names and identities, the strands of digital DNA that he leaves everywhere on the internet make it very easy to trace and locate him and his lame efforts at nefarious politicking.

But this article is not about the vermin that is Reuben. On the contrary, it is about Nana Ogbodo and his sanctimonious façade of electioneering sportsmanship. It is the height of pretentious gamesmanship for a person of Nana Ogbodo’s standing to attempt to hoodwink Ndi Enugu by literally hunting with the whales and running with the minnows. Nana sits behind his desk, holding aloft a political olive branch with his left hand, even while his right hand is busy directing the orchestra of calumny, character assassination, and fake news.

Since this campaign began to ascend, the PDP in Enugu had been looking like an abandoned fawn in a forest of hyenas. The gaping disconnect between the party in the state and their own presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has created a crushingly debilitating identity crisis that is forcing them into a search for national relevance. This, it could be recalled, forced them a few months ago, into adopting the vanquished “Peter for Peter” campaign slogan, in a perilously shameless attempt to ride the warmth and popularity of the Peter Obi wagon.

To begin with, neither Barr Chijioke Edeoga as a person, nor the Director General of the Edeoga Campaign Organisation, issued any statement during this Christmas beyond the customary Christmas cards distributed to his supporters, and that is chiefly because the sober and sombre season he has had following the heinous bloodletting that has been visited upon his people by marauding killer. For him, there was nothing to celebrate at a Christmas during which many families are busy burying loved ones that were so inhumanly murdered, while the remaining are helplessly battling to stay safe for at least another day.

What has been happening in Eha Amufu is the worst form of criminal bestiality. It is so blood-cuddling that only a person with the mind of a monster would contemplate playing politics with such grave of gruesome destruction of human lives.

I can tolerate the childish attempt to pit Edeoga and Peter Mba. Since this campaign began to ascend, the PDP in Enugu had been looking like an abandoned fawn in a forest of hyenas. The gaping disconnect between the party in the state and their own presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has created a crushingly debilitating identity crisis that is forcing them into a search for national relevance. This, it could be recalled, forced them a few months ago, into adopting the vanquished “Peter for Peter” campaign slogan, in a perilously shameless attempt to ride the warmth and popularity of the Peter Obi wagon.

Although this failed rather woefully, the Enugu PDP has not stopped fawning over the Obidient Movement and striving in vain to hang their imperiled campaign on the high moral standards that the Labour Party represents. This is the whole idea of all the feeble efforts to foist an inexistent rift between Obi and Edeoga.

But this hasn’t worked, just as previous efforts at making the Edeoga campaign lock horns with Chief Dr. Sam Onyishi, the Catholic Church, and Miyetti Allah have all been futile.

Only a Reuben Onyishi, a man, a sadistic and paedophobic being of questionable ancestry would bring the rather unfortunate issues of the killings in Eha Amufu into the fray of politics. For a man whose favourite sport was wife battery, it should come as no surprise that he would reduce losses of hundreds of the lives of the people of Eha Amufu to the politics of finding daily bread.

While I can understand the attitude (or lack thereof) of Reuben to such serious issues, I find it hard to reconcile the incongruity of such base rhetoric with Barr Nana Ogbodo’s posturing about fairness in political campaigns. It just does not fit into the personality he tries to mould, except he, like most pretentious leaders we have seen in Enugu and other parts of Nigeria, has begun to unravel.