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NEWS EXPRESS is Nigeria’s leading online newspaper. Published by Africa’s international award-winning journalist, Mr. Isaac Umunna, NEWS EXPRESS is Nigeria’s first truly professional online daily newspaper. It is published from Lagos, Nigeria’s economic and media hub, and has a provision for occasional special print editions. Thanks to our vast network of sources and dedicated team of professional journalists and contributors spread across Nigeria and overseas, NEWS EXPRESS has become synonymous with newsbreaks and exclusive stories from around the world.
The victim, famous filmmaker Don Pedro Obaseki
By OUR CORRESPONDENT
The raging online war between pro and anti-Edo monarchy forces took a turn for the worse when the cousin of immediate past Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki, Don Pedro Obaseki, was physically assaulted and striped off most of his clothings in Benin City earlier this Sunday, December 28, 2025.
Youths loyal to the Oba of Benin swooped on Don Pedro Obaseki while he was playing football at Uwa primary school in the city center, raining him with slaps and blows, shouting “oghionba”, which translates to enemy of the Oba palace.
Don Pedro who is one of Nigeria’s foremost filmmakers and a pioneering founder of Nigeria’s film industry was matched disgracefully by the mob and forced to salute the Oba as the baying youths poured insults on him.
They took him to the Oba’s Palace and asked him to crawl on his knees in front of the palace.
A number of unidentified chiefs came out and took Don Pedro Obaseki into the palace as the mob shouted that they shouldn’t let him free.
There have been tensions between supporters of former governor Godwin Obaseki and those of the palace during and after the tenure of the former governor.
The ex-governor is being accused by the palace of disrespect.
Specifically, Pedro Obaseki is being accused of attending ex-governor Obaseki’s recent ‘meet and greet’ in London, where he addressed some of the accusations levelled against him by the Oba and his sympathisers. Pedro Obaseki spoke on the occasion in support of his brother’s rule and dealings with the traditional institution, which the Oba’s supporters took as an insult to even disagree with the king in the open.
Many people online have condemned the actions of the hoodlums and accused the palace of tacit support for the illegality of assaulting an individual on the basis of his criticism of the palace.
“We are practising a constitutional democracy and not a monarchical system of government. No individual should be brutalised by non-state actors on the basis of their views on their traditional institution,” one commenter said.
