Politics
Dirty Dancing In Delta As Okowa, Omo-Agege’s Men Go To War
By Emmanuel Aziken
The unfolding battle for the position of governor of Delta State from May 2023 is promising to be the most keenly contested political battle in the state since the advent of the Fourth Republic.
Even before the candidates have been fully determined, the contest has turned into a messy battle with the combatants descending into the gutter. While as yet the battle has not and may as well not turn physical, the verbal exchanges between the two dominant political parties in the state, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and the All Progressives Congress, APC is bruising the personalities of the frontline combatants.
Names are being called and personalities abused as the combatants prepare for war.
While the APC after its own internal crisis arising from the supremacy battle between Senator Ovie Omo-Agege and his former rivals has now settled into cordiality, the same cannot be said for the PDP.
GWG reports that Omo-Agege had been accused by Festus Keyamo, the minister of state for labour of imposing those he termed as his (Omo-Agege’s houseboys and house girls) as party executive. However, Keyamo following the good gestures from Omo-Agege during the burial of his father has now understandably given up the fight in Delta and focused at the national level.
However, the same level of cordiality cannot be said for the PDP given continuing discord over the candidate for the party.
Speaker Sheriff Oborevwori who had emerged as the candidate of party in the governorship primaries is being tackled by David Edevbie.
After a Federal High Court in Abuja ousted Oborevwori as candidate, the speaker’s victory at the Court of Appeal has now restored him as candidate for the PDP.
However, GWG reports that the battle is yet far from over as the Edevbie camp has vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court.
The Scenario For War
When on 29th August, the PDP spokesman, Dr. Ifeanyi M. Osuoza congratulated Oborevwori on his victory at the Court of Appeal, it inadvertently set the stage for what has now turned into a raucous display of verbal missiles between the ruling party in the state and the APC.
Osuoza in a message of congratulations to Oborevwori had said:
This defining victory at the Court of Appeal is not just a triumph for Rt. Hon. Oborevwori and his teeming supporters, but indeed a welcome victory for our great party, as it has revalidated and endorsed our stand that our party primaries were free, fair, transparent, and very credible.
We, therefore, use this medium to call and appeal to all loyal party members, especially our distinguished Olorogun David Edevbie, to see this victory as a solid and unshakable platform to come together as one united family and join hands with his brother Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori in the formidable PDP campaign train that will be put in place now that the issue of our Governorship candidate has been resolved.
We have consistently maintained that our party primaries were a family affair and that we will remain one united family irrespective of whatever the judicial result had been. The opposition is already devastated by this victory at the Court of Appeal and together we shall march with full confidence into the 2023 elections and triumph with an overwhelming landslide in all positions.
I call on all our Party Faithful to NOTE that there is; NO WINNER, NO VANQUISHED in the present circumstance.
Congratulations Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori!
APC’s Toxic Congratulation To Oborevwori
The following day, the Omo-Agege Campaign Organisation through its spokesman, Ima Niboro, also welcomed Oborevwori’s victory, albeit, rejoicing that he would be an easier candidate for Omo-Agege to roll over.
Ima Niboro, who served as spokesman to Goodluck Jonathan both as vice-president and in his first days as president, has never been a part of the PDP establishment in Delta State despite his achievements outside the state.
Welcoming Oborevwori’s victory, Niboro, the Director, Communications and Media Strategy of the Campaign Organisation, described it as good news for APC.
The former Presidential Spokesman described Oborevwori as a weak and compromised candidate who will find it impossible to explain why Deltans should give him opportunity to mortgage the future of the state with more humongous loans with nothing to show.
He called on Deltans to resist Oborevwori, PDP and Governor Ifeanyi Okowa with their ballots, insisting that the PDP Governorship candidate who could not run a House of Assembly, definitely cannot govern a complex state like Delta.
His words: “Oborevwori’s victory at the Appeal court in the certificate fraud case against him by David Edevbie is good news. Oborevwori is the obvious weak link in the 2023 guber race.
“What more can you ask for when you have a Sheriff whose only claim to fame is a specious “street credibility,“ in a state gripped by a selfsame street anomie, a soaring crime wave, unemployment, greed and wickedness.
“What more can you ask for when Delta youths, already seething with anger, have been presented Okowa, the loan master’s main acolyte; his partner in mindless borrowing; his cheerleader in general misplacement of priorities, ineptitude, cluelessness and brinkmanship?
“Deltans do not want the continuation of a government that has pauperized and inflicted untold hardship on them; neither do they want a Sheriff coming to town just to ride roughshod over them: a Sherriff who foreshadows a coming lawlessness, dictatorship and lack of accountability.
Niboro enjoined Deltans to join hands with Delta APC to rescue the state from stranglehold of PDP, stressing that “APC’s Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, is leading the charge to chase out the locusts and cankerworm in human form feasting on our commonwealth at the expense of millions of our dehumanized and dispossessed people”.
PDP’s Verbal Demolition Of Niboro
The poisonous welcome was one that especially rankled the PDP as it accused the APC of panicking over the emergence of Oborevwori.
The party in a statement signed by its State Publicity Secretary, Dr. Ifeanyi Osuoza alluded to what it claimed as the rising profile and growing popularity of Oborevwori as being responsible for the palpable overwhelming fear it claimed had gripped the opposition APC in the State.
The statement reads: “It is the anxiety of the impending defeat that has made the APC’s gubernatorial campaign organization to become hysterical, and as usual enter into its fit of misleading publicity.
“Not surprising, however, the good people of Delta State have since come to terms with the delusion of the opposition APC, and have since resolved never to be hoodwinked by the antics it packages in capsules of deception. This is the light in which the latest prank in the cant signed by the current propaganda-in-chief, one Ima Niboro, who signs off as Director, Communications and Media Strategy, Delta APC Gubernatorial Campaign Organisation is seen by the people.
“In the hackneyed material, with the title: “DELTA APC WELCOMES OBOREVWORI TO GUBER RACE….. SAYS HE’S THE WEAKEST LINK IN THE CONTEST AHEAD” the APC Gubernatorial Campaign Organisation exposed its sudden intense feeling of being full of worry and fear by the rising profile of the PDP gubernatorial candidate, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, and so it is scared by the inevitable defeat that awaits it in 2023. First, the landmark decision of the Court of Appeal in favour of Oborevwori has since thrown their campaign organization into overpowering fear and anxiety, so much so that the APC is now nervous and agitated.
GWG reports that the PDP in its response has put it out that it would not spare anything including the use of innuendo from the past to tackle the APC and its candidate.
It made this out by noting political and other scandals that had been traced to both Niboro and Omo-Agege.
Noting Niboro’s stewardship as Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, the PDP spokesman said:
“Again, it is the height of indecency and moral degeneration for a discredited former Presidential spokesman who left a legacy of a lackluster and demeaning outing at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), from where he was kicked out as General Manager with ignominy over allegations of malfeasance to want to cast aspersion on the laudable integrity of Oborevwori, whose tenure as Speaker has been without blemish for two consecutive tenures. Listen to the sly propagandist again: ‘“What more can you ask for when you have a Sheriff whose only claim to fame is a specious ‘street credibility’ ”.
“Here, the APC propaganda machine misfired and exposed his being a half-baked intellectual with a base understanding of the English language. The Encarta English Dictionary defines Street credibility as “Fashionable appeal: popularity and acceptance among fashionable urban people, especially the young” It is this street credibility which Oborevwori possesses that has gotten APC frightened, knowing that the youth will go for him, a credibility that the man of the Senate mace fame lacks, and has sent jitters into the party’s fold. It points to the imminence of APC’s defeat and they are in a panic.
“Incidentally, the propagandist in a fit, spoke of anomie, a word popularized by the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka. Is it not an open secret that in present-day Nigeria that it is the clueless, incompetent APC-led Federal Government that is associated with that word? Writing recently about APC’s atrocious misrule of Nigeria, someone out of exasperation stated: “Merely looking at the havoc these savages brought in by the APC to help it win election in 2015 have wreaked on this country, and continue to wreak, one is surprised that a lot of people still even associate with such a political party – an assemblage of vultures that has soaked this country in unprecedented carnage.” What can be more damaging about a profound sentiment expressed against the APC-led Federal Government and its adherents?
“Hear the shameless APC propagandist again: “Deltans do not want the continuation of a government that has pauperized and inflicted untold hardship on them; neither do they want a Sheriff coming to town just to ride roughshod over them: a Sheriff who foreshadows a coming lawlessness, dictatorship and lack of accountability.” This is the sentiment expressed by Nigerians across the board against the APC faithful and its Federal Government.”
GWG reports that the caustic dispatches by the PDP and the Omo-Agege Campaign foreshadows what promises to be an enthralling campaign in which both sides would fight dirty sparing nothing in their bid to win the governorship.
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