Sheriff/Oborowheri 2023 Joint Ticket: Ovie Omo-Agege Is Your Next Governor, Okowa Wrecking The State – Prince Kpokpogri

Open Letter To PDP Critical Stakeholders In Delta

THE HOGWASH DEPUTY GOVERNORSHIP TICKET TO MONDAY ONYEME: ANOTHER COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Shame to the People’s Democratic Party, PDP in Delta State. What a shame that one man, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa who has pepper in his hand will ask you to open your eye to pour the pepper in it and you will foolishly do so. After singlehandedly giving you a Governorship candidate, he has also given you a Deputy Governorship candidate. One man!

I do not have any issues with the candidacy of Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori as PDP Governorship Flagbearer. He is a friend and family, and I have my personal love for his person. There is nothing I have done that he has not contributed to, and I owe him that respect.

However, the choice of Monday Onyeme to join his ticket as a running mate is a slap to the sensibility of not just PDP leaders, stakeholders and members alone, but that of the entire Deltans. A man with no credibility, an every minute chain smoker and chronic drinkard can never make a good Deputy Governor for the almighty Delta State. It’s laughable and smacks of sheer foolery, indicating that the victory of the main election is as good as handed over to the APC candidate, Ovie Omo-Agege. The Deputy Senate President, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege has done well for himself in character and performance and there is nothing short of beating the PDP to its game in the general elections.

ALSO READ: Ekweremadu: We Followed Due Process Before Issuing Organ Donor’s Passport, Says NIS

Where are the likes of Chief Patrick Ukah, the current Secretary to the State Government; Barr. Chiedu Ebie, the former Secretary to the State Government, Chief Fidelis Okenmor Tilije, the current Commissioner for Finance and of course, a former Governorship Aspirant, Chief Godwill Obielum? These are refined gentlemen with intelligence and credibility in the PDP, not the likes of Monday Onyeme who does not mean well for his party, PDP and Delta State. The information available to me even has it that Godwill Obielum won the Deputy Governorship Ticket during the screening, but was allegedly shortchanged by the Governor who desperately needed Monday Onyeme. Exactly what they did to Governor Wike on the Vice Presidential Ticket where 3 was greater than 16.

Mr. Monday Onyeme who is currently the Chairman, Delta State Board of Internal Revenue (DBIR), for the past seven years of occupying that office, has never for once declared the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the State. He has over the years ran that Agency of Government as a personal estate, only at his liberty and that of his principal the Governor. He goes about dashing money to a selected few of his hang-on boys in the name of Empowerment at the detriment of the State. Is it such a character that Deltans will allow to run their affairs as Deputy Governor? Not possible!

I recall that in the same State, we had a man called Joel Onowakpo Thomas at the helm of affairs of that Board under the administration of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan. He was not only visible in the Government as a creator of developmental contents and programmes, he was regularly briefing the press of the IGR of the State. He was instrumental to the development of the “Delta Beyond Oil” policy and through that effort, built human capacities and developed infrastructures and business resources across every strata of the economy.

Joel Onowakpo built Tax offices in all the 25 local government areas of the State, increased the workforce of the State and provided supports to businesses which helped to create viability in the economy of the State. Apart from giving credit to micro, medium and long term enterprises to survive and help sustain stability of economic activities, the low hanging fruits were regularly supported with cash and micro business trainings. There was joy which brought about peace and unity because everybody was productively engaged, including the so called popular “One Belle Boys” during the administration of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.

Those achievements above became a thing of the past with the coming of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa and his “Ego Aria” mantra. It was that bad that he even increased the suffering of the people by upgrading from “Ego Aria” to “Ego Aria Kaka”. Till date, even with the huge increase of capital inflows into the State, the Governor and his cronies are the only ones who are benefitting from our common patrimony. While many are daily overwhelmed by the agony of what to eat, the Governor and his boys are busy building hotels and buying choice properties home and abroad with monies stolen from the State monthly allocations and loans collected on behalf of the State. We will track these monies and properties no matter where they are located and no matter the code names they are using to hide them from the Anti Graft Agencies.

We cannot talk about this wickedness meted out to Deltans without the attachment of Monday Onyeme’s name to it. He had to a large extent helped to drive the plunging of the State into economic abyss. Today, such a man has been picked by his principal as Deputy Governorship candidate of the PDP to cover him from the much amassed wealth and then continue from where he is going to stop. All these things are happening, because one man has successfully pocketed the party in the State and all the critical stakeholders are moronically and complacently looking.

Who was Governor Okowa before 1999? What was his pedigree? He was nobody. Where has he ever worked after school aside the fact that he saw politics as a lifetime career earlier in life?

However, in all of these, it was Chief James Ibori that made him. From Secretary to the Local Government, he became a Chairman in Ika North-East Local Government Area, then Commissioner under Chief Ibori as Governor, SSG and Senator under Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan as Governor.

Today, he has stabbed Ibori and others who helped him to climb the political ladder in the back. He is a known traitor and betrayal; and these character traits run in his blood and DNA. It is only unfortunate that this is coming to a national scale at this time. He has always manipulated his way up to the detriment of others.

This deceitful and treacherous trait has come to National limelight and he has become a pariah. Such a tag like ‘Southern Betrayal’ will take forever to erase. You can imagine a Governor who was delivered on the basis of Anioma Agenda, only to assume power and forgot Anioma and picked cronies just from his Owa and Ika extraction of Delta North to empower. Today, because he desperately needed to betray the Southern people to get the VP ticket of PDP, he has claimed to be an Igbo man. This is the same man who once denied IPOB by saying that his Ika people were never and can never be part of Biafra. Such is the nature of a man speaking from both sides of his mouth and not consistent with simple integrity.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the general outcry over his betrayal of the Southern people of Nigeria, he has once again done another damage to Deltans by the choice of Monday Onyeme as Deputy Governorship candidate of the PDP. If the Deputy to Sheriff must come from the Anioma extraction of Delta State, why not someone with credibility, human face and with some refined qualities? Why must it be someone who will soon start to sleep at the EFCC cell?

For the fact that the Governor derives joy in hurting people, using them and dumping them, we will continue to make him a spotlight around the mess he has created. I have no business supporting any political party because I am not their card carrying member, but as a concerned citizen, we have to save this country before it is ruined by these bad leaders.

Who can he even boast of making apart from his Owa and Ika folks? The Isoko people supported him and gave him maximum cooperation, but he abandoned them. Aside from Askia Ogeh, every other person to him is none existent.

From the Itsekiri axis, the Governor betrayed them and singlehandedly picked Michael Diden a.k.a Ejele as his evil executioner against everything decent and transparent.

Then coming to the Urhobo land, his supposed greatest benefactors, yet he slammed them with disdain and contempt, ridiculing their existence of unity and oneness of purpose. He rebelled against their leader, Chief James Ibori and brought him down politically in his desperate attempt to hijack the political dynasty the man known as “Odidigboigbo” has built and nurtured over the years.

He destroyed Delta State, betrayed South-South and Southern Nigerian people; we will not let him destroy Nigeria. We are on a mission to stop the Governor from destroying the remaining fabric left of Nigeria. And that is why the Vice Presidential Ticket he has gotten on the threshold of lies and deceit will never fly. Details about his borrowings and financial recklessness are loading; they will shock the world how the Ika born Governor has mismanaged and rendered the economy of the oil producing State of Delta useless.

Moreover, I am surprised to watch the video of the rented crowd at the airport to receive the Governor because of a Vice Presidential Ticket that cannot fly. “Who do us in Delta? Our mumu never do?”. Renting of crowds that you pay #2000 each is no longer in vogue, it is an old way of politics that has lost its salt. It can’t work this time. Money that cannot buy you a bag of rice is useless to you.

Let me also advise the Governor’s boys to stop using pseudonyms to respond to me on social media. If they are worth their salt, they should come out boldly to sign an advertorial against me rather than hiding under faceless groups like the Movement for Stronger Delta (MSD). I have never been in government, but I have achieved more than them in government who only know how to steal from the commonwealth of the people. If they are bold, confident and ready to defend their principal, then they should take me on with their real names on their reactions and rejoinders. I am a concerned citizen and an anti corruption crusader, I have the constitutional right to interrogate actions that lack integrity and tantamount to causing injuries to the wellbeing of the majority of the citizenry.

I want to use this medium to urge Deltans to look away from PDP being a sinking ship. It is unfortunate that these misfit politicians are using our mothers to dance around town all in the name of welcoming a betrayal amongst us. Please and please, do not mortgage the future of your children because of these peanuts they are handing over to you.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said in Luke 23:28, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children”. Please, our mothers, enough is enough; do not mortgage the future of your children and your children’s children, all in the name of crumbs from the politicians’ tables. And don’t bother about me; this is what I am born to do – holding thieving politicians accountable.

Say no to a betrayal Vice Presidential candidate. Say no to every minute smoker as a Deputy Governorship candidate. It is unfortunate that PDP leaders feigned docility and ignorance; and allowed the Governor to produce a man who is capable of burning the Government House with fire from his cigarettes if he becomes a Deputy Governor.

In actual sense, there are refined gentlemen like Patrick Ukah, Chiedu Ebie, Fidelis Tilije and Godwill Obielum who could have adequately balanced Sheriff Oborevwori and give Deltans no room to complain. However, the PDP has cheaply given their chances away, thereby creating an alternative in DSP Ovie Omo-Agege, being a thoroughbred loyalist of Chief James Ibori and a former member of the PDP. All things work together for his good!

Comrade Prince Kpokpogri,
Chairman, Anti Corruption and Integrity Forum,
Chairman, PKR Multi Service Nigeria Limited,
Publisher, Integrity Watchdog Magazine,
Board Member, Int’l Human Rights Commission.