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By Basil Okoh

Delta North has no political leaders. No society has political leaders. Political leaders change from time to time and as society progresses. Delta North political leaders are those currently in office. All others are politicians belonging to different old factions or political parties.

So Okowa’s political faction met recently to listen to his announcement of entry into the 2027 Senate race and to endorse his senatorial ambition.

Okowa’s gambit to urgently announce entry into the senatorial race is a move to block the emergence of Ned Nwoko who is now winning the endorsement of the APC national caucus as the candidate of APC Delta North for the 2027 election. Okowa’s public announcement is a calculated move to block the public acceptance of the announcement of Ned Nwoko in Delta North. It is his desperate move to remain relevant and dominant in Delta North politics where he has been a champion long before the coming of Ned Nwoko who he endorsed to the Senate in 2023.

He interpreted the looming acceptance of Ned Nwoko by the APC to mean the taking away of Delta North control from him. The public announcement is to preempt the announcement of Ned Nwoko as APC candidate. It is also his fight back against the APC. Okowa forgets that no one can be champion forever. So whatever he does to stop Ned Nwoko, his time is up.

Ifeanyi Okowa has occupied every political office in Delta North but the people have never seen or felt the impact of his stewardship. They see only the benefits to himself and his family, a deeply selfish rendition of service only to self. His sense of entitlement to political power even without benefit to the people, has never ceased to amaze as has been witnessed in these parts. His determination never to let go of this antediluvian and self deluded sense of ownership of political power is also so hated in the communities he pretends to serve. Okowa can never win a free and fair election anymore in Delta North and his party men know this as they also know that he has never won a free and fair election. His only hope of winning an election is that it is pre-bended and is not free and fair.

Delta North has never belonged to Okowa and he has never been popular as politicians of the defunct PDP think. Okowa maneuvered himself into positions to determine who gets into primaries in PDP and who wins in the primaries. So he got popular or notorious, depending on the interpretation of winners or losers. Notoriety is not the same thing as popularity. The losers feared him while the winners considered him popular and reverenced him.

He has been notorious for using every possible means to win elections for himself and for his loyal followers. For instance, Ika North-East voting population grew from about 26000 in 1999 to over 150,000 in 2019, nearly 600% growth in 20 years, very exaggerated and falsified demographic growth. In the 2023 elections with automation by the use of BVAS and the IREV, Ika North-East recorded about 34000 total voters. The computer rejected and corrected all the rigged numbers and falsifications and recorded only the natural order of election voters.

Ned Nwoko himself was growing in popularity as senator until he shot himself in the foot with the Anioma state creation conundrum, proposing the joining of the Delta North (Anioma) with the Southeast Igbo. Even now, Ned Nwoko does not realize how deeply unpopular he has become with the Anioma state creation issue in his Delta North senatorial district. Joining the South-East is among the most vexatious issues among the Delta North people. And he continues to falsify and insist that Delta North people join the Igbo when they share no commonality in history and culture. He shames his electors so stubbornly and childishly too.

The Delta North people feel so hurt and insulted, seeing Ned Nwoko prancing around to willfully change their history, hiring Igbo stragglers to re-write their history and replace the proud Delta North kings and Chiefs in public with paid Igbo drifters. It is a shame to see our own senator voted for by people of the Delta North land and by our own people running around to work for and impress the Igbo and not the people who voted him to the Senate.

This the Delta North people consider to be grand scale betrayal and treachery of the land and people of Delta North, to the extent that the once popular Anioma name is being abandoned because of the insistent treachery of Ned Nwoko. They are all waiting to pay him back at the juncture of the election.

So the issue of the elections to the Senate in Delta North is not settled between Ifeanyi Okowa and Ned Nwoko. Any nominee of the APC from among the two may not fly, if a passably good candidate emerges from another party. Delta North has a definitive choice of senator in its hands in the 2027 election.

@basilokoh. Ok