Delta Guber: No Amount Of Vote Buying Will Save Oborevwori And his Godfather, Okowa

For the past couple of weeks, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has ordered heads of all Ministries, Department, and Agencies (MDAs) of the Delta State Government to credit accounts of every government worker, senior or junior, with N10,000 in desperate vote buying for Sheriff Oborevwori, his placeholder candidate, for his third term bid as governor. By fire by thunder, it will never materialize any positive result.

Driving his habitual greed for wealth and power to the extreme, Okowa entered into the 2023 elections race as a two-timer, aiming in one election circle to be both Vice President of Nigeria and a defacto third-term governor using the face of his party stooge and rubber-stamp Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Oborevwori.
Having predictably lost his Vice Presidential bid, of his greed and backstabbing tendencies, Okowa has thrown all cautions to the wind, believing he can buy all the votes needed to impose the misfit Oborevwori as his successor. So acting on the orders of Okowa, every Delta Civil Servant, including judicial officials and teachers has been credited with N10,000 to vote Oborevwori. Everywhere, heads of State MDAs in Delta are transferring N10,000 per staff, begging on bent kneels for votes to be given to Oborevwori. In DESOPADEC, N2 million has been transferred to every composing ethnic nationality to share with staff, with the top management personnel to their various localities to beg for votes. These appeasements of the state government’s workers are aside the hundreds of millions of the state’s commonwealth Okowa and Oborevwori have poured into sharing stomach infrastructures in cash and kind, including cars and bogus promises in desperation to win over the support of key opposition, particularly in APC, Labour Party, and SDP.
Ironically, the more votes buying Okowa is spreading, the more the rejection of Oborevwori among the electorate. At the Ughelli North Council Secretariat, despite announcing the N10,000 vote bribe, angry staff reminded the Local Government Service Commission delegation that Okowa refused to implement promotion and arrears while Oborevwori refused to sign the Local Government Autonomy bill. One of the council staff reminded Okowa, “When Governor Ifeanyi Okowa got elected, he told LG staff point blank that they have no use for him. He then rendered the Delta State Local Government Service Commission redundant by introducing INFOSEC (owned by a former council chairman in Isoko).

“Infosec, unknown to the State LG Service statutes took over the marking of attendance by clocking as well as the management of staff promotion. This deliberate conspiracy was deployed by Okowa to deny council staff promotions and attendant arrears.

“They claimed they were blocking leakages and exposing monies frittered to ghost workers but it was actually done to divert LG funds for sharing into private pockets through Infosec. As soon as Covid-19 came, Infosec died and no report has been submitted to date on that project. “For Oborevwori, the PDP candidate, rejected LG autonomy when the matter came before the Delta State House of Assembly. So why should we listen to him if he now comes to seek our votes when he never meant well for us.” Even Okowa knows he and his placeholder candidate, Oborevwori don’t deserve the votes of the Delta people.
His resort to buying every vote attests that he knows he hasn’t done well. Never in his vote-buying tendencies over the elections that gave him his two tenures and governor did he go to this extreme? Again I say it will never be well with Okowa. Even if he empties the state treasury and borrows more to throw into vote buying, he will never succeed in using Oborevwori to seek a third term. Just as vote buying failed to make him Vice President, the handwriting is bold on the wall. Another failure looms for Delta PDP.

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Oborevwori will fail on March 18. Beneficiaries of his vote buying, indeed the generality of Deltans, pained by Okowa’s failed governance, are making bold statements of his rejection. “It’s our money, we will eat it and vote for a better candidate”, they are chorusing. The more Okowa and Oborevwori are doling out vote buying and stomach infrastructures, the more party leaders are defecting in droves from the PDP along with teaming followers. Key appointee, Ovuzorie Macauley just resigned and joined the APC a few days ago, each defector having critical grievances to express.

And by the caliber and leaning of those leaving the party, hardly any close watcher is in doubt that the ominous of silence Delta PDP’s godfather, Chief James Ibori, in the campaigns of Okowa and Oborevwori speaks to his disapproval of the rubber stamp speaker of Delta House of Assembly as the party candidate. Ibori is speaking loudly through his loyalists that are turning to the APC candidate, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege.

It is against the growing rejection of the Oborevwori’s governorship bid that I find it very strange, so appalling that Okowa’s predecessor, Emmanuel Uduaghan, chose to impose themself as the defacto campaign spokesman to the Oborevwori. Between Okowa and Uduaghan, Deltans must begin to wonder whether it would be worth it to have another medical doctor as governor of Delta in the near future. Aside from their abysmal performances as governors, Uduaghan set the tone for the celebration of incompetence and ignorance in the choice of appointees and elective political officeholders in his regime. Okowa elevated this impunity when he came in.

With this disposition of theirs, it is not strange, but most reprehensible, that at Delta Central’s turn to re-occupy Government House, Asaba, of all the informed and capable minds abound in Urhobo, it is a community tyrant, a rubber stamp Assembly Speaker with doubtful school and birth certificates that Okowa and Uduaghan, two trained medical doctors, one the incumbent governor, the other his predecessor, consider as most qualified to be Delta, next governor. Even more shameful is the realization that after all the mockery and laughing stock Okowa-led Delta PDP has subjected Uduaghan, he still blatantly turned himself to Chief Town Crier to sell a bad product as Oborevwori.
This is a former governor Okowa refused to support for a senatorial ticket in 2019, was forced to defect to APC, and was then humiliated in defeat by Senator James Manager. In his shameless return to the PDP ahead of the 2023 polls, he had suffered further humiliation with his daughter refused a State Assembly ticket while Okowa’s daughter got hers effortlessly, Ibori’s daughter now a Rep- elect. Under Uduaghan’s watch, the Delta South senate ticket he was not deemed fit to get was given to another unlettered community warlord, Ejele.

I am indeed as much ashamed of the Itsekiri as I am of my native Urhobo, which has also drifted into the elevation of mediocre representation in government. I thought Uduaghan should be worried about Ejele becoming the Delta South senator he never was allowed to be. Rather he is fixated on promoting an Osubi tyrant as governor.
To reiterate the basic point, even if Okowa empties the state treasury and borrows more to throw into vote buying, he will never succeed in using Oborevwori to seek a third term. Uduaghan can go to any length in promoting Oborevwori for governor; God who cannot be mocked will never answer such a prayer. It’s a matter of a few days and we shall see the results. And when the looming failure of Oborevwori happens, he and Okowa will join Uduaghan in political retirement.

Zik Gbemre
March 13, 2023

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