DELTA 2023: Ovie Omo-Agege, Trudging, Edgeing to a Landslide against a limping PDP campaign of failure

It’s no more news that Nigerians and the global communities have their minds fixated on the forthcoming Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC organised general elections in the world most populous black nation.

The dramatis personae are all on their toes bringing to fore their track records, antecedents, capacity, experience and competence to bay support and ultimately win the mandate of the citizens as they reference their achievements at one time or the other within the country’s political space with the international communities watching with keen interest to see democratic tenets being entrenched in the pride of Africa – Nigeria.

There’s no gainsaying the fact that reactionary elements within Nigerian political environment wish to launch themselves back at the centre while the progressives who are mostly liberal democrats – the All Progressives Congress, APC is working hard to retain power armed with its claims to have done so much within a space of 8 years of post Peoples Democratic Party, PDP era evidently characterised by wanton corruption in high places for 16 years of the representative governance.

While the PDP eyes the centre, the APC aims at mopping up those states that fell off the now Iyiocha Ayu’s led PDP’s bag in 2019 general elections particularly states in the South-Southern Nigeria where the umbrella party has a stranglehold of the political system mostly criticised for poor service delivery, zero achievement to better the lives of the citizenry which explains why the political actors in the APC reference their achievements and candidates of other parties reference China, Malaysia, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirate etc for reason of dearth of achievements here at home; little wonder the political interlopers in Delta State Government House have their campaign wobbling and limping in a shambled movement.

Expectedly, there are two major contenders for Osadebe House, Asaba but while the candidate of the broom party, the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, is a maverick politician, a top notch in all he does, a lawyer by training, exposed, decent, suave, visionary, a reformist with excellence of ideas, whereas; his opponent from the PDP Mr Sheriff Oborivwhori, is a direct opposite.

The umbrella party in the oil-rich Delta State blessed with enormous human and material resources – illustrious sons and daughters who can hold their own anywhere in the world has a stark illiterate who is doubtfully passed through the walls of a secondary school let alone graduated from a tertiary institution anywhere in the world.

The emergence of Oborivwhori and Okowa’s support for him speaks volume of what the umbrella party represents in the annals of Nigeria’s political history. A party that goes for the very worst: Osun and Delta States on my mind.

Governor Okowa with the nomination of the Okpe-born candidate of the PDP murdered morality and sacrificed meritocracy on the platter of nepotism and profiteering. Interestingly, Okowa gave victory to Obarisis Omo-Agege the day he opted for the dumb Speaker of the House of Aseemby who couldn’t speak throughout his tenure as ‘Speaker’ till date due to his art of murdering and poor of use of English Language making the entire process of the PDP campaign a mockery.

“Are you no go vote Atiku; are you go vote APC?’ The situation is as bad as that in the limping camping of failure of the PDP.

Mr Okowa’s attempt at insulting the collective sensibilities of deltans have made the battle for the Asaba Government House a walkover for the man who has captured the hearts of deltans.

While in his ongoing ward to ward campaign across the Delta North Senatorial district where Senator Peter Nwaoboshi is a driving force, Senator Omo-Agege demonstrated his oratory prowess and capacity for smooth sail to the Government House. He made so many statements of fact due to the failure of the limping PDP.

While the PDP has nothing to campaign with, the APC gubernatorial hopeful reeled out his successful representation in the three Senatorial Districts of the state as he challenged the PDP to name any legacy project executed by the current administration in the state and the people answered, none.

At Ogwashiuku, DSP Omo-Agege mocked the PDP for misruling the oil-rich state in thick darkness as he promised never to sustain darkness in the state just as he promised the people of Ndokwa nation that the Fedreral University of Agriculture and Technology, Aboh and other seeming projects that have suffered years of abandonment in the region shall be completed when voted to power by the electorates.
From one ward to the other, the people see in Omo-Agege, a man who is ready to walk his talk, an erudite personality to whom integrity makes a huge sense as against a bunch of looters and plunderers who go about deceiving the people as of old thinking its still the old way – its not going to be business as usual. Delta State for the first time since 1999 must democratise, results won’t be negotiated or written, no matter what the deal with the state INEC officials is. Place INEC officials on payroll at your peril, our state must democratise in 2023 – APC is not DPP….we are armed with earth shaking intelligence and at the right time, “we go burst una bubble.”

The major weapons of the DSP Omo-Agege campaign train are the composition of his team and his social contract with the people- the EDGE agenda. The Agenda is aimed at EDGEing out the SMART thieves from the psyche of deltans, May 29,2023 going forward. At this instance, the SMART looters would be consigned to the dustbin of history with reformative tendencies of the EDGE which smarks a new dawn in the history of Delta State since the advent of democracy having been under the stranglehold of the PDP since May 29,1999.

THE EDGE
It’s a chronicle of the agenda to free deltans from the shackles of devastating PDP’s misrule over the years by enthroning a government with robust tool of reengineering a new Delta State where the youths and women would not be only be empowered to buoy their domestic economies but capacitated to hold their own anywhere in the world.

That great agenda- the EDGE being the creation of a visionary leader with bias for human and material development will remove all vestiges of retrogressive polices of the SMART rogues in the governance of Delta State.

On a 4-throng, the EDGE to BAND Manifesto stands and it is a clear departure from the clannish and self-serving Okowa’s SMART-nonsense that created more poverty, divided deltans more, promotes clannishness, subjected some sections of the state to subservience under a smaller ethnic minority owing to dearth of the attributes of statesmanship in the Mayor of Owa-Alero, deltans under the current administration were SMARTed into mass illiteracy and despondency.

Under the Employment and Empowerment leg of the EDGE, the visionare, DSP has promised in his campaigns to create wealth through massive employment; through capacity building, genuine and sustainable empowerment programmes unlike the politically-driven weapon of mass poverty of the SMART agenda that has ruined the citizens beyond what Okowa met.

The ongoing ward-to-ward campaigns have witnessed a whole lot of promises that are practically achievable and in this instance, the governorship hopeful of the APC has promised to link Bomadi and its environs to national grid exiting them from eternal darkness that, that axis of Delta State was SMARTed into by merchants of darkness – the PDP.

In addition to that promise, that not only pulled Ijaw crowd closer to the peoples’ choice and APC – the most popular gubernatorial and envied candidate in the state, DSP Omo-Agege vowed to build educational institutions in that area to enable citizens embrace the privilege of Western education without stress whereas, they were deliberately SMARTed into mass illiteracy hitherto by the PDP bandwagon of thieves.

The choice of the people of Delta State also have in his EDGE agenda adoption of a bottom-top approach to human and material development through the vehicle of needs assessment to meet up accordingly the needs of the citizens.

The lawmaker understands that good governance is measured in terms of human and material developments and for these, he has a robust practicable plan of using the weapon of EDGE to trudge ahead successfully in injecting life into wealth creation for the people.

In all of the above, good governance is the ultimate aim and objective of the great manifesto which is the first of its kind in the history of political developments in the oil-rich Delta State.

Security in the state under the EDGE agenda shall endure using the instrument of meaningful engagement and favourable empowerment by unlocking the creative acumen of the youths and that will automatically remove them from the streets while eschewing vices like cyber crimes, fraud, drugs and sundry crimes.

In capsule summary, the above analysis goes to show that deltans are in for a new lease of life as DSP OMO-AGEGE trudges and EDGEs to a landslide victory at the March 2023 gubernatorial polls, a day the Obarisi will take no prisoner but an overwhelming victory while Oborivwhori and his PDP limp, fumble and wobble out in shambles into political retirement, call it extinction, one may not be far from the truth.

Deltans will reject in absolute terms, a stark illiterate who cannot communicate in English Language nor read a document understandably before signing same, lest he signs deltans into forest of slavery.

Delta State PDP is limping and swimming in corruption to the knowledge of all deltans and they have vowed to vote out the cesspool of corruption that abhors accountability, transparency, honesty and sincerity of purpose in the governance of the state. The bewildered deltans are asking governor Okowa to account for #240billion backlog of derivation fund from 1999 till date that the ‘aboki – Fulani’ administration paid and quietly collected from the federation account. The people of the state are asking Okowa administration to give account of the accruals in billions to the state’s intervention agency, the Delta State Oil Producing Area Development Commision, DESOPADEC that has become a cashcow since Mr Okowa assumed power.

For the records, DSP Omo-Agege has promised deltans that he will activate DESOPADEC productively to impact on infrastructure development and not an ATM for vested interests like the cesspit of corruption turned it since creation while the Internally Generated Revenue, IGR finds it’s way into the pockets of PDP chieftains at the detriment of public good.

While destiny beckons on DSP OMO-AGEGE as he EDGEs and trudges gallantly to a landslide, Deltans will vote out an abysmally performing party that has backpedaled development in the state and holding the treasury by the jugular for the benefit of a bunch of fat-bellied, good-for-nothing and never-do-well party chieftains who smile to the banks on daily basis while citizens go to bed hungry with pensioners groaning and dying in wants.
Now is when to issue Okowa and his fumbling, dumb and non-speaking-speaker Oborivwhori a red card forever.
With the above analysis, I call on deltans to be in a hurry to vote OUT PDP on the gubernatorial election day.

● Sunday Onyewonsa, is a member of the Media Directorate and Special Adviser to the Deputy Director General, APC Campaign Council, Delta State.