Banner Online News

By ‘Wemdi Nwaham

Mr. Ima Niboro, the Director, Communications and Media Strategy, for the Deputy Senate President, Obarisi Ovie Omo Agege, has been in the news lately, for doing his job but doing it poorly.

Who is Ima Niboro?
Let’s hear what his friends said to him, when he accepted to work for Senator Ovie Omo Agege, the deputy Senate President as his spokesman.
In Niboro’s own words, “I fully expected some of the reactions I received from colleagues, friends and a few seniors when I was announced to design and execute the communications and media strategy for Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, the Deputy Senate President’s bid for the governorship of Delta State”. “Of the many reactions I got, two stuck with me”.

We will deal with only one here. Niboro continues, “One was from a younger colleague and a close friend who currently edits one of Nigeria’s biggest newspapers.
“He said, “on this your appointment, I don’t know whether to tell you congratulations or ask what the heck you think you are doing.”
“I chuckled. I knew what he wanted to say, but I asked him what he meant anyway.”

_“I am just here wondering why you, a former presidential spokesman and former News Agency of Nigeria MD, would accept to run a state governorship campaign media”_ , he said.

This forms the major plank of the pity with which IMA NIBORO should be generously draped in. For a name with the pedigree taunted, he has performed below par so far.

He has issued two press releases in the past one week. The one has to do with the position of his party, the Delta APC on the judgement delivered by the Appeal Court on the tussle for the guber ticket between two PDP gladiators. In his release, issued on 30th August 2022, titled
DELTA APC WELCOMES OBOREVWORI TO GUBER RACE: HE’S THE WEAKEST LINK IN THE CONTEST AHEAD, Mr. Niboro in the ten paragraph statement dwelt entirely on qualifications of the victorious candidate and how it will be easy for them to discredit him after the polls, instead of punching legal and procedural technical holes in the judgement. That is because there was none.

Mr. Niboro presented a pathetic picture of a party that knows they have a herculian task beating the PDP at the polls so they must sustain the legal option as their only way to victory. Good luck to them.

Even a 200 level law student will cry himself hoarse, if he is tutored on an elementary legal procedure as going via a writ of summons where witnesses (in this case the issuing authorities for Rt. Hon. Sheriff’s “disputed” certificates) instead of going via an originating summons, which is lazy and dubious laywers navigate to riggle out of a legal debacle. Is it conceivable that the David Edevbie’s legal team has not gone to the issuing authorities of the certificates of Rt. Hon. Sheriff? They certainly have, but to their disappointment, all the issuing authorities owned up to their certificates. And that is why the defendant’s legal team did not present them.

So, what is APC lying in wait with, to go to court after they have lost the election of March 2023. Again, good luck to them,

Another Release from this “Director, Communications and Media Strategy of the APC Campaign Organisation”, is the release he made on 2nd September 2023, accusing the Delta State government of planning a phoney rural youths skills acquisition programme, with the real intention of collecting PVCs from the unsuspecting youths.

Just to keep matters short and simple, such alarm raised by Ima Niboro does not befit his previous status. The election that will be contested comes up in March next year. The technology being deployed by today’s INEC, makes the use of another person PVC practically impossible, unless APC knows what we and INEC do not know.

A so called Director of Communications and Media Strategy ought to know better how to have full proof case in matters like this. The government of Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa has done an excellent job of tackling youth unemployment in the rural as well as the urban areas of the state, from his first 100 days in office in 2015. Tens of thousands of Delta youths have benefited from the programme in the past seven and half years. Why is it now that this adolescent accusation is coming up? Because election is coming?

That is how APC rejoiced over the lost case against RT. Hon. Sheriff, and they were singing hossana. A good media strategist raises the stakes by communicating both to his audience and to his principal. He should deal with proven cases, not making a mountain out of hear say stories and allegations. What we are entering into now is very serious business, not rabble rousing. Mr. Ima Niboro should do his “lofty” credential and his constituency, the media, a favour by not being an unnecessary alarmist now. There’s so much ahead.

* Iwemdi Nwaham, is SSA Media
Governor’s Office
Delta State.