OPINION: Okowa Finishing Strong On Evil Against Deltans

Since the era of thieving James Ibori, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hegemony of narrow-minded governance, insensitive to the common good, over Delta state, has continued to slide in stewardship with successive administration.

Ibori came, opened up several roads but in shoddy projects deliberately to incompetent contractors as partisan favour and to ease looting of the state treasury which led to his jail in the UK. He duplicated Delta State polytechnic and balkanized the Delta State University Abraka (DELSU), a politicising location that complicated its management and escalated running costs.

Enter Uduaghan

Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan, the successor elder cousin Ibori imposed, had a few model schools, free child maternal care and infrastructures decay intervention at Warri Central Hospital to show. With so much inflow into the state treasury, Uduaghan turned wastrel of a governor.

He left office building castles in the air for Delta people. Among the seeable white elephant projects of Uduaghan, N11Billion was sunk on a racket called upgrade of Osubi Airstrip after the original owner, Shell sold it to another private oil firm, Shoreline.

The former governor told the public that the reckless waste of public funds on a private airport was to improve the state as an investment destination, but the real suspicion remains that he bought into the Shoreline purchase deal on the Osubi-Warri airstrip.

Inside Uduaghan’s legacy of wastage, you also find Oleri and Ogwachukwu Tourist Parks, Warri Industrial Park, Effurun Sapele Road BRT, ruinous NPA DSC Express facelift, and many more. Nothing came out of these billions of naira gulping conduits, all of them abandoned by his successor.

Uduaghan’s parting gift to Deltans was ‘Finishing Strong’ with the propaganda he called ‘Delta Without Oil.” Whatever he meant with that meaningless catchphrase, nothing tangible manifested. Delta Without Oil image laundering left no sustainable benefit for the common good. It was conceived and delivered on paper. Today, it is archived in a glossy magazine.

Okowa ‘Finishing Strong’ on Clannishness

Okowa came into the scene with one mindset – that being Governor is only about yourself, family, home community and Anioma agenda. To Okowa, Ibori and Uduaghan neglected Anioma, so to do catch-up, he must site every key project in Owa Oyibu like there will be no tomorrow.

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On that pact of clannishness, aside from the bogus new state secretariat project inescapably done in the state capital, Asaba, when Okowa thought of a Teachers Professional Development Centre (TPDC), Owa Iyibu, his village was the best choice of location. This is a government that has no Mathematics teachers in secondary schools, can’t pay teachers minimum wage, promotion arrears or prompt entitlements to retirees.

Like Ibori, he needed a tertiary institution Ika people can call their own, so he announced the upgrade of the College of Education Agbor to the University of Delta, Agbor.

To divert attention from the clannish desperation of having a university for Ika people, he duplicated DELSU into Dennis Osadebay University, Anwai, making it two for Anioma and elevated Ozoro Poly to a University of Science and Technology.

True to the clannish intent, it is the University of Delta, Agbor that is getting the rapid development attention, to the extent that he is hurriedly duplicating a college of medicine already at DELSU Abraka in the University of Delta.

Meanwhile, the Delta State University Teaching Hospital is collapsing to acute neglect, resulting in infrastructures decay and brain drain of qualified trainers. According to the Association of Resident Doctors, DELSUTH chapter, “Departments in the hospital are gradually losing accreditation, a requirement pivotal to residency training, provision of services and research. Some resident doctors were unable to apply for the last fellowship examination due to accreditation issues.”

The Resident Doctors are lamenting that the brain drain at DELSUTH is being induced by poor remuneration and a lack of a conducive working environment. Consequently, every month, the teaching hospital lost all cadres of skilled health workers to Europe and Asia.

It is so disappointing that this sad narrative is being said about the teaching hospital with a medical doctor as governor of Delta state. I’m so disappointed with Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.

What is in a teaching hospital without equipment, qualified experts to pass the knowledge to medical students while providing quality health service to the populace? How could Okowa be duplicating a College of Medicine for the state in the name of the University of Delta while the state teaching hospital is collapsing!

How did it get so bad with the PDP hegemony in Delta? DELSU Abraka has a medical school, probably suffering the same neglect as the teaching hospital at Oghara. While you have not been able to revive these existing institutions to optimal performance, you are duplicating a medical college in your community. How petty can governance get?

The cheering partisan crowds clapping to Okowa’s clannishness would be blind to the implications of duplicating mushroom universities in a state that is merely going through the motion of sustaining one University.

Okowa will exit the office passing the financial burden to his successor. Inflating tuition fees at the university won’t stop the challenge of sustaining them. Only depraved political desperadoes will find any value in a multiplicity of state universities within a state. Delta has no such capacity.

My advice, now that you have duplicated DELSU into three as we now have four state-owned varsities, what happened to the Law and Engineering Faculties of DELSU, Abraka. The right thing to do is relocate them to Abraka Main Campus of DELSU. No more need for multicampus when there are universities everywhere.

Okowa that is this much clannish is the one asking for a successor that is detribalised and willing to evenly develop the state. It’s a shame. With all concentration on Ika, his shoddy projects outside his home base are collapsing months after delivery.

To commission a glorified culvert he called the bridge that was shoddily delivered through incompetent Obakpor Engineering in Ovwor-Effrun-Otor, he engaged national TV networks on live broadcast while his Rivers state counterpart, Nyesom Wike, is completing his 10th massive flyover in Port Harcourt.

In the Isoko community of Ikpide-Irri road project, you find Okowa’s emblem of shoddy projects. Even after the government vindicated the community protesters that the road project as being executed by incompetent Portplus Ltd was too substandard to be accepted, Okowa went ahead to grant the contractor variation, increasing the contact.

How long had the Ikpide-Irri road project been stalemated in the contractor’s incompetence? Would Okowa have allowed it if the road was in Owa?

Finishing Strong On Terror Against The People

Copying his predecessor, Okowa has adopted the slogan of ‘finishing strong’. Uduaghan finished strong on emptiness, but Okowa apparently has set to finish strong on terror against the Delta populace. Else, how do you explain the thugs he has unleashed on the people in the garb of Revenue Taskforce?

At a time society is preaching tax harmonisation for ease of doing business and attracting investments, Okowa’s emboldened thugs are everywhere harassing and extorting business owners and motorists with all kinds of illegalities.

When Delta Government under Okowa enacted a law to eradicate “deve”, the local parlance for violent youths extortion on property developers, we shouted that they won’t have the political will to stop it.

The thugs who harass land developers are the same thugs who help political officeholders to rig elections. So Okowa enacted a law against ‘deve’ but then licence same ‘deve’ gangs through back door to sustain the harassment of property developers.

For businesses already established, different gangs of revenue task forces are invading premises, service demand notices for tenement rates, Delta State Waste Management Levy, a strange ground rent’, environmental and waste disposal rates and all kinds of extortions.

On major roads and streets of Warri and environs, yet another Revenue Taskforce, chasing motorists, impounding vehicles, removing number plates for various traffic or vehicle papers offences. These syndicates impound cars to Ugborikoko primary school, along Airport road Effurun, awaiting settlement by perceived offenders, and teaching school pupils hooliganism.

Several lawyers have asserted that this Okowa terror imposed on the people has no legal backing. This is why I am also disappointed by the Delta State Command of the Nigeria Police Force, for providing cover for the lawless Okowa Revenue Task Forces.

Okowa is finishing strong, indeed, on evil against the Delta populace.

Zik Gbemre
February 28, 2022