By Barr. JESUTEGA ONOKPASA,

Having left that accursed platform of serial political failures, bankrupt politicians, broom wielding night soil men, marauding herdsmen, bringers of hunger, harbingers of recession, devaluers of currency, increasers of fuel price, ruiners of national economies, apostles of nepotism, prophets of disunity, practitioners of hipocricy, adherents of mediocrity and agents of hopelessness called the All Progressives Congress, APC, I now feel it is my responsibility to commit myself to telling fellow Deltans and indeed, fellow Nigerians the bitter truth in order for the electorate not to be hoodwinked by APC and its ragtag band of noisemakers, greedy hunters and fanatical liars into making costly political mistakes come 2019.

Of late, the newest game in town on the part of Delta APC, is to attempt to sell Deltans the ridiculous idea that they actually have a viable political program of action for unseating the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and consigning incumbent Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa to one term in office.

While one flank of the party is increasingly buying into the idea that the best strategy for achieving this is to field a candidate from Delta North against Okowa, another flank continues to push the idea that it would be more politically feasible to field a candidate from Delta Central.

Unfortunately, both options, unknown to many, including supposed political mathematicians and seasoned tacticians in the state, are actually unviable and doomed to collapse spectacularly once implemented.

As a matter of fact, nothing could be more idiotic than both of these irretrievably nonsensical dummies the APC is currently trying to sell Deltans through those I can only describe as practicing political witchcraft in broad daylight with ideas they have packaged in machiavellian deceit, knowing full well, they have no hope of upstaging the PDP.

If I was Governor Okowa, nothing would be more alluring and altogether more electorally attractive than the prospect of contending with an APC candidate of Delta North extraction, come 2019.

If I may ask, which of these potential candidates from Delta North has the slightest hope of realistically defeating a shrewd political tactician like Okowa in 2019?

Is it Dr. Ibe Kachikwu who has never contested an election in his entire life that someone out there thinks stands even the slightest chance of unseating Okowa in any kind of election at any level of electioneering?

Is it Professor Pat Utomi, who has absolutely no political structure worth the name anywhere in this world, least of all in Delta, that any serious politician can convince us is in any position to give Okowa even as much as a semblance of a fight, much less stands the remotest chance of defeating him?

Or, is it Engr. Victor Ochei, who Okowa keeps politically humiliating in Delta North, right down to his Aniocha North enclave, that some rascally loudmouthed rabble-rouser out there is going to convince us is somehow going to give Okowa the political fight of his life and wrestle him to the ground?

Which Okowa is anyone of these gentlemen even remotely likely to dent politically much less be deemed to be in a position to execute a technical knockout against?

Come to think of it, and with due respect to all of these gentlemen, even if they were all fused together into one, will any astute political pundit wager his money on their being able to defeat Okowa, of all people?

The simple truth is that the notion that some candidate from Delta North is the APC’s joker against a shrewd political grandmaster like Okowa is a tall ambition incapable of coming to fruition!

In fact, while still in the APC, one of the most depressing trends I noticed was the tendency amongst the ever quarrelsome and quarrelling leaders of Delta APC to keep giving their party members the impression that defeating Okowa in 2019 is a victory already in the bag. I often jokingly wondered whose bag and if I could take a peek at it!

Yes the clueless, frustrated and disgruntled stalwarts of the APC can whip ourselves into a frenzy of confidence in Okowa’s supposed political vulnerability at their meetings and rallies except that every authentic politician would immediately realise that Okowa is anything but a pushover; indeed, far from it!

Anyone convinced otherwise is a buffoon destined to harvest political disappointment for his or herself once again in 2019!

Despise and hate Okowa all you may, the man is a towering specimen of a political grandmaster. It can even be said of Okowa that the toil he underwent in becoming Governor of Delta State in 2015 is the most herculean gubernatorial effort witnessed in the state since 1999 if not ever.

He can boast of having emerged vide the first authentically democratic gubernatorial primaries in Delta PDP and can legitimately claim to have become Governor without any godfather in the mould of what was available to his immediate predecessor.

The man just kept fighting tooth and nail against all odds, stubbornly refusing to give up, and ended up disgracing and humiliating his detractors and political foes at the polls while studiously refusing to be defeated in court!

It is by any standard, and whether one likes him or not, a feat of truly impressive political achievement on his part.

Instead of pretending they have a weakling of a political gladiator to contend with in their kindergarten ambition to unseat him, the likes of Cairo Ojuogbor should stop deceiving their party men that they suddenly have found the magic wand for upsetting someone like Okowa, even in their own locality.

Just as the good people of Delta North would not be foolish enough to gamble on an APC candidate of Delta North extraction come 2019 when they are far safer with a Governor already from the zone, so also no sizable number of the Ikas are going to turn against one of their own.

At the end of the day, blood will be thicker than water and all the sugarcoated postulations of the likes of Ojuogbor will come to naught.

That the people of Delta North would turn out to be such political gamblers as to ditch Okowa for an untested candidate from their zone is nothing but a pipe dream, an old wives’ tale and just another cock and bull story meant for the politically childish!

As for Olorogun O’tega Emerhor who is presently prancing about, pitiably trying to sell the utter fiction that he is a leader in Urhobo land when he cannot even command the political loyalty of his tiny Evwreni enclave, his claims of being capable of convincing the Urhobos to support an APC candidate from Delta North in 2019 is nothing but a rather poorly packaged political scam.

O’tega is quite well known to me and while he may feel confident about taking others of lower intellectual capacity for a ride, he himself knows that he is not more intelligent than me and that I am not the sort of person he can make a fool of.

The truth is that Oo’tega has come to the realisation that being incapable of winning even his Evwreni ward, much less winning Ughelli North, or Delta Central, he would only be fooling himself should he continue to delude himself he has any hope of ever becoming Governor of Delta State.

Rather than continue to fool himself, he has decided that it would be much better for him to fool the rest of us while smiling to the bank at our expense.

Knowing full well that he cannot become Governor, he wickedly does not want another Urhobo man to be Governor, hence he came up with this utter crap of APC fielding a candidate from Delta North against Okowa in 2019!

Now, O’tega cannot tell me that he doesn’t know that all Okowa needs to do against an APC candidate from Delta North is to simply go to the Urhobos and remind the good people of Delta Central that when it was their turn to produce a Governor, their son ruled for eight years.

Then he shifts base to Delta South to remind them that when it was their turn to produce a Governor, their son also ruled for eight years.

He then points out to them that if an APC candidate from Delta North were to succeed in unseating him, there is no guarantee that such person will be satisfied with doing only one term of four years as O’tega and his irritating bunch of political neophytes would have us believe.

Should such person later insist on doing eight years, as would be expected of him as a typical Nigerian politician, we would then end up with a situation in which whereas both Delta Central and Delta South did just eight year stints, Delta North would be doing twelve years just because a group of grownup men and women calling themselves politicians woefully failed to see beyond their noses, all in the name of unseating Okowa!

Now the people of Delta Central and Delta South will surely then wonder what in the world could possibly entitle Delta North to have twelve straight years while they only got to do eight years each!

Detribalized as I am, I personally will never tolerate a situation in which my Urhobo ethnic nationality did only eight years only for Delta North to end up doing twelve and only God knows what after that!

It cannot possibly make sense for Delta Central, the most populous part of the state to do eight years only for Delta North to end up doing twelve!

That is certainly never going to happen.

By the same token, it is utter insanity that while Delta South, comprising the Itsekiris, Ijaws and Isokos, including a sizable number of Urhobos, gets to do just eight years, Delta North enjoys an unprecedented twelve year stretch.

Having thus laid the foundation, all Okowa needs to do is to entreat them that since constitutionally, all he can do is another term of four years, he should be allowed to, so that power finally shifts to Delta Central for the cycle to begin all over again!

The people of Delta Central and Delta South that I know and belong to will surely buy the idea and vote for him! Anyone who figures or claims otherwise is an ignoramus, a liar or a fool and should stop deceiving us even if he decides to continue deceiving himself!

After all, the people will simply come to the conclusion that it is better to allow Okowa another four years after which someone from Delta Central can takeover rather than to send him packing for another person from the same Delta North to come in and insisting on doing eight years with the effect of Delta North doing a total of an inequitable twelve years at the expense of the other two senatorial districts.

This is precisely how real politik works and if there’s a politician out there that does not know this, he does not know anything.

Nobody should fool himself that there is any potential candidate from Delta North that will end up doing only four years. That is just the biggest lie of the century.

Nigerian politicians do not behave in that manner. They may solemnly promise to do just one term, even swear on the Bible, on their mother’s grave and on their children’s heads combined, and, when it is time to leave, they will insist with a straight face that they are going nowhere!

Nothing would annoy, infuriate and alienate the citizens of both Delta Central and Delta South more than the prospect of Delta North ruling for twelve years when they both did only eight years each.

So let everyone just forget about it for as far as I can project, no one from Delta North is defeating Okowa in 2019.

Which leaves the opposition with the option of fielding a candidate from Delta Central.

Unfortunately for all the Okowa haters, not even this option can take off and land safely without pitiably crashing midair with miserable consequences for all who had invested their political resources therein.

As we have already seen more than enough times now, no one senatorial district, including Delta Central can go it alone and achieve gubernatorial victory in the state on its own and there is absolutely no need to keep deceiving ourselves.

In order to win, other senatorial districts must buy into the ambition of any one district or the candidate from that district will fail.

Yet such cooperation across districts in itself evokes a consensus envisaging not only the equality of all three zones but also equity for each and every one of them.

In such a situation it would be deemed to be highly unfair, unequal and inequitable for Delta Central to have done eight years, Delta South to have done another eight years only for Delta North to end up doing only four years.

For even Delta South to have the confidence that when it gets to its turn again in the future, power will be allowed to shift to it, it must have been seen to have equitably gone round the three senatorial zones of the state thus firmly establishing the political equality of all parts of the state.

If we of Central and indeed, Delta South, cannot imagine Delta North doing a total of twelve years while we each did only eight years, then we cannot at the same time proceed to deprive Delta North of a second term to complete its own eight years.

If Delta North cannot be allowed to steal the turn of Delta Central come 2023 through an APC candidate from Delta North, then surely we cannot make a case for stealing the second term of Delta North in 2019 through an APC candidate from Delta Central!

Since, knowing Nigerian politicians for what they are, another candidate from Delta North, other than Okowa, is not likely to genuinely agree to do only one term and vacate the seat when the time comes, it turns out that a second term for Okowa is at the end of the day, the best option for everyone.

If we allow him his just second tenure of another four years in office, Delta North would thus have completed their just and equitable eight years like other parts of the state for power to then shift to Central for the process to start all over again.

It is time for all of us to do our political arithmetic well enough for our own good and the good of the state instead of allowing the perennial failures that have converged in APC to keep playing us like a guitar when it is the same Okowa they are deluding themselves they can defeat that remains everyone’s best bet come 2019.

As is his custom, Chief Great Ogboru must be spreading wide somewhere, as usual, feeling like a general when he never enlisted in any army, imperiously assuring his pathetic rabble of supporters he has finally found the secret of defeating Okowa and the PDP.

Unfortunately, there is just no way he can build the consensus across the state to win and is only leading his pitiable “army” into another even more pitiable defeat at the hands of Okowa and the PDP, who, on their part, are warming up to humiliate him as usual.

Going forward, I can find no tenable reason to either continue to deceive myself or allow myself to be deceived by political jokers any more.

Instead of making an enemy of Okowa when it is clear he is returning, it is my candid opinion that our better option in Delta Central, is to join hands with him, take ownership of his ambition and firmly plant ourselves in the position of stakeholders in his administration come 2019.

To those still painfully roaming in the wilderness of the opposition in Delta, my advice is that instead of continuing to deceive themselves, the bitter truth is that it is with supporting Okowa and ensuring they are part and parcel of those who return him come 2019 that their political credibility can be confirmed.

Needless to say, only thus can they avoid a situation in which they remain outsiders in his government for yet another four years of political misery.

Barr. JESUTEGA ONOKPASA,

178 Sapele/Warri Road,

Sapele,

Delta State.

07037212475

ekwetafia@yahoo.com

.

Rubbish. A failure will remain a failure. Buhari inclusive

I weep 4 Delta state. Unfortunately Okowa is d best they have to offer. Only Victor Ochei (my in law) can match him but Ochei has gone into political oblivion. There is no opposition in Delta, from Amori to Uduaghan to Okowa to Osanebi to O'tega to Omo-Agege to Ochei all all Ibori's boys. D only 'Ibori's boy' dat wanted to break off completely and wld av done well is Pius Ewerido but was killed somehow.
Delta has no hope except d godfather is overthrown. (pls Note dat godfather did quite well during his 2 tenures) I wonder y his 'sons' r messing up.
U all know who is godfather is.
No b my mouth u go hear say Oghara sons r strongmen.

What a terrible and pathetic kind of reasoning.
Your support is not predicated on any form of growth that the state has failed to experience, but strictly on geo-political sentiments.
Whoever you are, you are a terrible tribalist.

Okowa is the biggest failure that has happened to Delta state. In the 3 years that the man has been governor, he hasn't done anything whatsoever but to share money amongst politicians.
Nobody cares about all the tribal considerations you mentioned. People just want development and Okowa is probably the worst governor in the whole country. He would be booted out in 2019.
Delta state has been terribly unfortunate with leaders. And that is because of sycophants like the writer who chose to sell thier soul for a piece of bread.

PapaBrowne:
What a terrible and pathetic kind of reasoning.
Your support is not predicated on any form of growth that the state has failed to experience, but strictly on geo-political sentiments.
Whoever you are, you are a terrible tribalist.

Okowa is the biggest failure that has happened to Delta state. In the 3 years that the man has been governor, he hasn't done anything whatsoever but to share money amongst politicians.
Nobody cares about all the tribal considerations you mentioned. People just want development and Okowa is probably the worst governor in the whole country. He would be booted out in 2019.
Delta state has been terribly unfortunate with leaders. And that is because of sycophants like the writer who chose to sell thier soul for a piece of bread.

God will bless you for speaking the truth and he shall meet you at your point of need.I don't know what we did in delta state to deserve someone like Okowa,very vision less and greedy! Until we break the winds idiots holding our state in captive i see no headway.

Dr. Okowa AKA "Prosperity has come to stay" shall be removed from power but I don't like the option of Victor Ochei. I heard that guy is a tribalist.
We need a fairly greedy politician from Delta North that will perform 70 percent and loot 30 percent and not Okowa or Ibori boys that steal 91 percent and perform 9 percent.

God forbid Okowa and Buhari for 2019....
Our mumu don do.

For almost three years, he has done nothing, at the dying moment, he is stirring up sentiment.

E no go work, even his own people are feed up of him

jared007:
Dr. Okowa AKA "Prosperity has come to stay" shall be removed from power but I don't like the option of Victor Ochei. I heard that guy is a tribalist.
We need a fairly greedy politician from Delta North that will perform 70 percent and loot 30 percent and not Okowa or Ibori boys that steal 91 percent and perform 9 percent.

Bros the governor can come from anywhere in delta state so long he performs.