The Delta State 2023 governorship election has come and gone and it has also been won and lost. What came out of it was the fact that the Delta State All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege was defeated like a political nobody. Winning only four out of twenty-five local government areas in the State, Omo-Agege ended up like a political neophyte who needed serious lessons in politics. Those close to him say that he is now convalescing in a political intensive care unit. Omo-Agege is a creation of himself, over-hyped and overrated. He cuts the image of a boastful wrestler without skills, but mouthy and full of taunts. For this, he had many fans before the wrestling bout. But once thrown and defeated after a few seconds into the bout, the fans see him as a clay footed fellow and he was abandoned.
Many factors contributed to Omo-Agege’s electoral waterloo. His hangers on and uncritical media mercenaries continue to cook up stories to massage Omo-Agege’s badly bruised ego by alluding to untenable reasons why their paymaster lost. But the good and discerning people of Delta State rejected Omo-Agege and the APC and voted for their own in Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
To begin with, we must commend the magnanimity of the Governor of Delta State, Senator Arthur Ifeanyi, Okowa of the PDP, for allowing all the candidates a level playing ground by not denying them the use of public facilities or harassing them. Omo-Agege in his insensitive bravura was even holding meetings with civil servants across the State. His Chief Press Secretary, the ever malleable Sunny Areh, in his “Unraveling Delta PDP Electoral Heist” as usual uncritically trailed the path of blame game without looking inward to understand why Omo-Agege lost woefully. Using worn out clichés and sterile phrases which made the intellectual mode of the Omo-Agege campaign clumsy and unexciting, Areh embarked on a futile rigmarole that offered no clue into why his boss was so badly slammed politically.
Omo-Agege lost for so many reasons. One of them was that he was never in sync with the spirit, letters and ideals upon which Delta State was founded. This culminated into a cardinal sin in his many infractions against Delta State. Omo-Agege is devoid of a pan-Delta spirit as he has been an implacable enemy of rotation which has brought fairness, equity, justice and stability to Delta State. How can the people of Delta State entrust their sovereignty to the enemy of the very ideals that sustain the State? It was his rejection of rotation that made him to participate in over six governorship election processes since 2006. He therefore lost the consensus of the Deltans. His other sins against Delta State are multiple. Some can be tracked in his sojourn in public service in Delta State. He came to the scene as a personal assistant (PA) in 2003. He soon manipulated the system into becoming an executive assistant (EA) and then became a commissioner and SSG, some say undeservedly. He abused his closeness to the then Governor of Delta State by raiding ministries and hijacking high budget projects in the name of “His Excellency”. He instituted “deve” on government contractors working across the State. Some of them were so over-aghast that they fled the State. He hijacked forty-eight projects meant for his Orogun clan, and left the projects unexecuted. He turned DESOPADEC into his private refinery.
So, when Omo-Agege came campaigning for the governorship, the people remembered these transgressions and rejected him.
Omo-Agege has always been loud and long on boastfulness but short and lean on strategy. That is why he has never on his own won any election in Delta State.
He failed in his attempt to go to the Federal House of Representatives in 2003 and in his bid to be governor in 2006, 2010, 2011, 2014 and in a particular year he changed political party five times. He failed the Senate election in 2013 and 2015 until a judicial miscarriage of justice took him into the Senate. In 2019, he was on his knees begging Delta Central leaders to win the Senate election. So for him to fail in 2023 is in line with his political trajectory. He lacks electoral value.
Omo-Agege’s is nepotistic. He hijacked a polytechnic meant for Delta North and took it to his village in Oromurhu-Orogun. As a Senator representing twenty-four kingdoms, Omo-Agege located all five projects in his Orhomuru-Orogun of less than forty houses and one hundred and fifty people. He appointed three Orogun people into a 4-man management team of the polytechnic which is a federal institution. His ten topmost aides are his Orogun brothers.
Omo-Agege didn’t see politics as a humane engagement, but as a vile and vindictive enterprise. He was too vicious in his attack on the PDP, Governor Okowa and the Rt Hon. Oborevwori. He saw them as enemies that must be denigrated. He also chose the wrong target. The way he attacked Governor Okowa, one would think that the latter was his opponent. In doing these, Omo-Agege couldn’t tell Deltans what he wanted to do as Governor. He spewed too much bile and vitriol, while Oborevwori was telling Deltans about MORE, campaigning from ward to ward.
Omo-Agege also destroyed the APC in Delta State so that the party has no rallying point. He was a sole administrator who hijacked the party and alienated other party leaders like Emerhor, Ogboru, Utomi, Keyamo, Ochei, Ojougboh and numerous others. This is besides his unkind betrayal of Chief James Ibori and Great Ogboru, his two political benefactors. He also played a duplicitous game. He didn’t support Tinubu, but supported the Senate President, Ahmed Lawal, hoping to run as his vice presidential candidate, what he accused Okowa of doing with Atiku Abubakar. Tinubu knew of this and decided not to support Omo-Agege during the governorship election.
Omo-Agege’s role and greed in the payment of surveillance work by Urhobo, Isoko and Ukwuani youths was another chink in his weak armour. There was also the allegation that he has not accounted for money meant for the polytechnic and federal roads projects in Edo and Delta States. He didn’t come to equity with clean hands.
Omo-Agege despite his pretence to urbanity is intellectually malnourished and this left an intellectual and strategic gap in his campaign makeup. This also affected his poor representation in media discourse. While, Oborevwori’s media and strategic engagements were apt and able to connect with the people’s aspirations, Omo-Agege’s media outings were usually vituperations and aspersions which spoke to nothing good. Despite desperately hiring over twenty media entrepreneurs, Omo-Agege’s media and intellectual outings were exercises in slumbering.
Omo-Agege’s told too many campaign lies. He told four lies per local government area and even uncreatively repeated such lies again and again; re-promising what he had promised elsewhere. He promised building over six universities during his campaign. This gave him away as unserious.
He lied about Delta State’s indebtedness. He lied that Delta State was the second most indebted state in Nigeria. But a document from the National Bureau of Statistics exposed the lies. Omo-Agege campaigned on lies and not ideas. The lies also undid Omo-Agege because under his watch as Deputy Senate President, President Buhari has borrowed 46 trillion naira which he Omo-Agege approved and Nigeria is one of the most indebted nations in the world today. Under Omo-Agege’s party, the APC, Nigeria is one of the most unsafe places to live in the world, one of the most corrupt and also the poverty capital of the world. Why won’t the people reject him?
Sunny Areh’s uncritical mindset posits that Deltans no longer want the PDP. This is most untrue. He alluded to the PDP’s loss of Delta State to the Labour Party (LP) in the presidential election of 25th February. What a poor analysis! Did Bola Tinubu not lose Bourdillon where he lives and the ward where he voted in Ikeja to the LP?
So, why crow about the case of Delta? The PDP in Delta State did well in the presidential election compared to the APC. The PDP got 161, 600 votes as against APC’s 90, 183, while LP received 341, 866. A further look at the result of the National Assembly elections will show Deltans’s preference for the PDP. There were 12 seats (3 Senate and 9 House of Representatives). The APC got 2 Senate while the PDP got 1. For the House of Representatives, the PDP got 6, LP got 2 and the APC got only 1. So, of the 12 seats, the PDP got 7, LP got 2 and the APC got 3. The outcome of the State House of Assembly election shows that PDP won 22 out of the 29 seats. What more evidence does Sunny Areh and his deluded ilk need to know that Delta is a PDP State?
Omo-Agege’s Think Tank of intellectual midgets crafted for him a manifesto that was a disaster.
His EDGE mantra was seen as an attempt to push Delta to the edge of disaster just as his BAND agenda was constructed as a veiled contracting of Delta States to BANDdits, whereas, Oborevwori campaigned on offering MORE and Deltans easily related with his manifesto. Omo-Agege also saw the election as a class war. He branded himself as a lawyer and son of a chief judge. He painted Oborevwori as a social underdog. He derided Oborevwori’s background and called him unprintable names.
The mass of the people who identify with Oborevwori’s existential struggles and see in him a champion upholding their dreams and aspirations took sides with him, voted for him and rejected Omo-Agege. When eventually the truth came out, Oborevwori turned out to be better educated than Omo-Agege who made a third class degree in Law and a pass at the Law School and dropped out of a master’s programme. On the other hand, Oborevwori made a second class upper degree in political science as well as a sound Master’s degree in the same discipline.
Oborevwori’s populist credentials attest to his street credibility and why the people chose him over a phony Omo-Agege. Oborevwori grew up among the people. He toiled with them, spoke their language and ate with them. He knew their pains and could point at the way to go for them. Growing up, he was in the vanguard of creating a new world for the downtrodden. The people didn’t forget him.
Omo-Agege read the political signs wrongly. He mistook the crowd for the real voters and mistook boos for applause. When the Delta Unity Group (DUG) showed resentment against Okowa, Omo-Agege jumped into bed with its members. He cajoled old PDP members to come and join him. He promised them offices and contracts after the election. But he didn’t know that he was hiring tired legs and people with ideas that can no longer sustain today’s tempo and dynamics. The defectors couldn’t help him. He also couldn’t build bridges in Delta North and Delta South. Both Senatorial districts saw no reason in voting for an ethnic bigot like Omo-Agege.
The memory of Omo-Agege masterminding the stealing of the Senate mace also affected his credibility. Deltans were askance about a mace rustler becoming their Governor. In addition to this, is the dual case of fraud and forgery that made him to flee America and also drop his name Augustine for Ovie to obliterate his identity. Omo-Agege went against the grain in all ramifications and he lost. He is a gambler and a gambler does have his moments of wins and losses.
This is his moment of loss. He should hang his gloves and go and rest and recover. Sunny Areh must now regretfully remember three credible opinion polls that predicted that Oborevwori would win 21, 20 and 21 LGAs respectively. Omo-Agege and his propagandists dismissed the polls. Omo-Agege had actually planned to rig the elections, but failed. He only succeeded with his rigging plans in Ughelli North where he took INEC officials hostage for 48 hours and that was the last result to arrive Asaba. Oborevwori did refer to Omo-Agege as his brother in a Vanguard newspaper interview in January and that the latter would return to the PDP after losing the governorship election. As a leading DUG member posted on a Whatsapp platform, “the election has been won and lost”, Omo-Agege can now return to the PDP, the umbrella is big enough to accommodate him. He should not waste time and money in courts. Deltans have spoken and decided with their votes.
