By Basil Okoh
There’s been an annoying but unceasing attempt to force a leadership change in the Delta chapter of the APC without having to go through the process of election. The “leadership council” being forced on the party by a group of Abuja based Delta APC politicians and their few local collaborators is the latest attempt in the conspiracy to force a change in party leadership. It is more of a gambit to seize power from the elected executives of the APC than a proposition to achieve inclusivity in the management of the party in the state, as they have been advocating.
So if the proposal for the leadership council succeeds, APC will have leaders who are not elected, who are agents of PDP and who will be directed and teleguided by PDP. Opposition will become so nuanced in Delta state that they become ineffective and elections will become straight runs to perdition, predictable, as one political entity will be the power behind both parties. We believe that the APC national secretariat saw through the Trojan horse presented by the “leadership council” advocates in APC. It is an attempt to hijack or steal the leadership of the Delta state chapter of the APC and control it from Government House, Asaba.
Thus the contestations within the APC in Delta State are shrouded in so many layers of intrigue, each layer having it’s roots in the PDP and eventually benefitting the PDP. All the conceits are focused on the governorship election coming in 2027 and on how to remove viable governorship and house candidates from contesting the elections under the aegis of the APC. The plots emanating from the PDP provide the basis for understanding the crisis in Delta APC. The leadership council proposal was specifically designed to remove Ovie Omo-Agege from control of APC party machinery and put PDP men to rule the APC. The earlier plan for Governor Sheriff to defect to APC was part of this Trojan horse.
Members of the elite of APC are almost all defectors from the PDP and many still maintain ties to the PDP. This hostile penetration mischief should have been known by the APC. Many of the defectors are Trojans. It is naïve to have believed that these mass of defectors had no infiltrators among them or that they all had the sincerety of interest in the APC. Again many non infiltrating members of the APC are playing hunger games and trying to eat with a hand each in the gravy trays of both political parties.
The intricate web and depth of intrigues are under girding and confounding many of the public shows we see around the two sides in the conflict. Many APC members in Delta are wedded to PDP, cannot obtain a divorce and so are trapped halfway, unable to get a full definition either way. The ongoing move by PDP to share N200 million to PDP members in each LGA to stop the Exodus to APC will temporarily stop the membership hemorrhage in PDP. Though many are rushing in to win party elections in APC, their umbilical cords and loyalties remain in PDP. APC will have to resort to intelligence to identify and weed these men out of the management of their party.
Below are the APC men and woman who visited President Bola Tinubu at the Villa and the understanding of their plays:
Festus Keyamo, Minister of Aviation in APC Federal government, though said to be running to become the governorship candidate of the APC in the 2027 election, engaged in effusive praise of PDP governor Sheriff Oborevwori the other day, calling him a “bridge builder”, undermining APC publicity and making it more difficult to defeat the governor he has so heartily praised publicly. Keyamo’s praise and public endorsement of Oborevwori as a bridge-builder has been well publicized by the media, providing a benchmark for future characterization of governor Sheriff.
Stella Okotete was a burgess of the PDP, thriving so well in its backroom web of intrigues before moving to the APC. She was to be made Minister in the APC Federal government of Bola Tinubu but her tendered educational certificates confounded the Senate screening committee and she was stepped down for Keyamo to emerge. Though the National Women leader of APC at a time, she has been an insider in Delta PDP. Stella Okotete remains a well known associate and confidante of the PDP governor of Delta state Sheriff Oborevwori. She has just been gifted a bullet proof SUV which is alleged to have come from the governor and not her brother, as she claims.
Senator Joel Onowakpo-Thomas has been in the thick of PDP and money politics for a long time as the former head of the revenue board of Delta State. He is now the senator representing the Delta South senate district and preaches friendship and integration between the two parties as the elections are over. The opacity in the affairs of the Internal Revenue Board became a big problem to government at the time when Joel Onowakpo-Thomas was chairman. Onowakpo-Thomas’ linkage with the PDP and his business dealings with the state government and governor remains strong even while now in the APC. To serve Governor Sheriff Oborevwori’s interests, he is deeply involved In the plot to stop a viable governorship candidate from emerging in the APC for the 2027 elections. He has plotted to bring in Great Ogboru, the disrupter-in -chief of Delta politics, to help run rings around Ovie Omo-Agege and stop him emerging as the governorship candidate of the APC. It is a well orchestrated plot financed from Government House Asaba. Great Ogboru, down and out in money and public reckoning after six attempts to be governor of Delta state from six different political parties, has nothing more to lose with his back firmly on the ground even in his hometown, Abraka.
We recall Great’s boyhood friend, a leader in one of Nigeria’s biggest political misadventures in 1990, who while warning us in 2010 to steer clear of Great, predicted that “Great Ogboru can never be governor of Delta state”. It was mind arresting as we were just leaving Great’s campaign office in Abraka for the 2011 governorship rerun election.
“He has too much bad luck following him”, he warned. “That bad luck is so deep and heavy that it affects everyone and everything around him”. “I’m not kidding you my friends, stay away from that man”. We had just left Great working hard on a bottle of Hennessy which he had already cut in half, all by himself that morning.
That Joel Onowakpo-Thomas has cajoled him back to APC to run for governor after he left the party in 2023 to APGA will be a study in deft political intrigue playing out in real time as the politics of 2027 gathers momentum. APC Delta had better watch out as PDP will be relentless in its desperation to keep hold of Delta state.
Senator Ede Dafinone of Delta Central, scion of the respected Dafinone family is himself sinking deeply into an ethnic plot that he may not survive to win another Senate election. He is in plot with Governor Sheriff and the Okpe Royalty to stop Ovie Omo-Agege from emerging as the governorship candidate of the APC. The palace is backing Sheriff, a son of Okpe to win and continue as governor of Delta state. They also want to keep both the governor and senatorial seat of Delta Central in Okpe.
Unknown to Keyamo, Dafinone is backing Great Ogboru to contest the governorship under APC in collaboration with his colleagues from Delta South. Both senators, fearing their betrayal of Omo-Agege could be a drag on their own are hoping that Ogboru could help them in a way Keyamo cannot do. And by making Ogboru celebrate his come back to APC in Ughelli, the two APC senators are provoking Ovie Omo-Agege at his LGA headquarters.
The consolation for everyone is that Ogboru has run out of money to mount a serious campaign for governor again for the seventh time, a recurrent decimal in Delta’s governorship elections. He has also lost popularity, having come fourth with only 11,000 votes in 2023. After three decades of failure in politics, businesses entangled in bankruptcies and mired in debt with the debt recovery agency on him, most Deltans want Ogboru out of the governorship race. But then, this is a Delta State government plot and Ogboru will be financed as a disrupter of Omo-Agege’s Campaign from government’s deep pockets.
Francis Waive, member of House of Representatives for Udu, Ughelli South and Ughelli North, is the audacious APC politician who has gone in so deep, playing the two parties APC and PDP for suckers. Apart from the fact that as a member of APC, he has committed the effrontery of publicly endorsing Sheriff Oborevwori of the PDP for the 2027 governorship election, he also flaunts his treachery by going to represent the governor in public functions. Francis Waive should have been expelled from APC for his brazen endorsement of Oborevwori for 2027 governorship election.
Of the 5 APC stalwarts from Delta State who visited President Tinubu at Aso Villa last week, it is only the new but loud entrant into APC, senator Ned Nwoko who is believed to have cut all ties, public and private, with the PDP and does not carry any baggage of treachery into his new political group. He is considered a straight arrow after a clean and uncontested divorce. He also famously rejected the lucre given him by Sheriff Oborevwori, the PDP governor of the state. The gift of a Toyota bulletproof SUV and a monthly payment of N10 million, remains the Trojan horse which Sheriff and the PDP gifted him but rejected.
The other three APC members of the National Assembly, Senators Ede Dafinone of Delta Central and Joel Onowakpo-Thomas of Delta South and Hon. Francis Waive are alleged to be swallowing the sumptuous bait of the governors bribe of SUV and N10 million monthly payment. They are doing the job for which they have received the SUV and N10 million monthly. They are both mounting so many ambushes for Omo-Agege within the APC and all over the Southern and Central senatorial districts of Delta state to ensure APC fields a weak candidate for governor in 2027.
Even as momentum is on the side of the APC across the state now, PDP is not relenting and has launched a charm offensive to woo back defected members and those planning to defect to APC. N200 million has been allocated to each local government to implement this recall project. Anyone who thinks that PDP will lie back and watch it’s nuts being stolen from the political fire had better have another think. Okowa is a master of guile and intrigue and still controls the state government purse to work with Sheriff as governor. There will be deep penetration of APC in Delta state, so deep that anal regions at the very top will be ripped wide open.
The worry in all of these is that, mischiefs are happening under the watch of Elder Omeni Sobotie, who is the chairman of APC in Delta State. We know he had a tiff with Ovie Omo-Agege after the 2023 election but we assume this must have been settled, as we refuse to accept that such a disagreement should be allowed to get in the way of party progress. Elder Sobotie, the preacher man, has a choice to make: Either he stands steadfast with the truth, and refuse the infiltration and takeover of APC party by PDP or he chases with the hares by allowing and enabling the hostile takeover of the party that was entrusted to him. By allowing the horseplay on the “leadership council” could suggest complicity in his own management of APC. But we find assurance that the “leadership council” publication was shot down by the National Working Committee, NWC. He could, if he chooses, become the unforgivable leader who abdicated trust and responsibility in APC to allow and enable poachers to overrun him and wrest a political party from him. Or he could stand as the man we know him to be.
@basilokoh