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By Basil Okoh

The voters of Delta state did not defect to APC, only some PDP members did. They made a big bang of noise about it. All the members of the PDP did not even defect to APC as initially speculated. No, not even half of PDP members in Delta state defected to APC. And note this, total membership of all the political parties in Delta state do not add up to 1% of the voting population. A tiny fraction of that 1% are who make all the noise in the social media and traditional press. The rest of the population are in their farms and workplaces.

We had written not too long ago that Sheriff Oborevwori the governor, will destroy the political establishment in Delta state. We still stand by that statement, seeing that Sheriff has started the process of destroying the APC as he did the PDP. We knew this even before his defection to APC.

When the unelected Festus Keyamo formed the Council of Leaders in APC to undermine its leadership, everyone thought his intention was for good, to broaden the leadership base of the APC to include new defectors. His real motive was different. His intent was to create a crisis in the leadership in Delta APC to give the impression of a vacuum and enable a fellow Okpe man, Governor Oborevwori, who had lost the PDP even as a ruling party, to defect as governor and leader of APC, a more viable party and destination for all the defectors in the state. He maneuvered the president to get his wish, and the president with his own ambition of winning the presidency in 2027, obliged him.

Be informed that President Bola Tinubu had asked the state party chairman, senators and party leaders who visited him in February whether they wanted Sheriff Oborevwori who had been troubling him to come into APC, they all chorused no. Festus Keyamo went behind and cajoled the president into admitting Sheriff into APC without passing through the Party National Executive Council. The National Working Committee had no discussion with President Tinubu on such a weighty matter.

President Tinubu who believes that by winning over governors of states, he will roll over the states in the coming election, was fooled by Keyamo who used the presidents vaulting ambition to trick him into admitting Sheriff into the APC as governor and party leader and thereby discarding without consideration APC’s own corps of leaders ready for leadership and governorship candidacy.

As he did in the last presidential election, Tinubu believes he can win over a state by taking over its governor, so Keyamo gave him Sheriff Oborevwori who had lost the capacity to rule from his own party, PDP. Now Sheriff has taken over as governor and leader in a party he did not help to build and has no popularity to win elections because he has no real friends there. Cosmetic Surgeons will tell you that skin grafting is not always guaranteed to work.

In the very same week of Sheriff’s declaration, he was haughtily declaring himself as supreme leader of APC in Delta, daring anyone to challenge his leadership in the state.

Now as before in the PDP which he helped to crumble, he has taken over the leadership of the very same people who ran from him and defected from PDP because of his bad leadership. That is the political paradox in Delta politics today, you cannot run from Sheriff Oborevwori. You run from Sheriff, you meet him at the next intersection. In a public gathering of the political elite in the state recently, he was loudly trashing James Ibori from the lectern.

Sheriff has brought his old hatreds, division, quarrels and ethnic jingoism with him from PDP into the APC in Delta State. These were the faults and weapons which he used to destroy PDP and which made everyone flee from the party into the APC. President Tinubu should have been warned that Sheriff Oborevwori has no capacity to govern or to lead a party and will before the next election run down the APC and make it unable to win the presidential election in Delta state. Sheriff has started the process of destroying his new political party within a week as predicted. The fissures now growing in APC will deepen, expand and continue into the next election cycle.

The result of his actions will be that APC will not be able to galvanize the voters of Delta state to win the 2027 presidential elections for Bola Tinubu or the governorship election for himself in the state.

The old abrasions and deep injuries which caused the defections from the dominant party PDP in the state remain untreated. Old quarrels in both parties remain unresolved. In the frenzy to have a mega party taking over all the political offices in the state, even old and gangrened wounds were ignored and salved without real treatments, rivalries were ignored and ambitions were subdued to give the picture of a broad consensus, not minding that it was imposed by an outsider who had no stake in Delta politics and was pursuing his own presidential ambitions. Tinubu did not understand the underlying politics of the state. Now the embedded bugs and leeches are beginning to crawl out of the woodwork. The reality of the false and pretentious unity imposed on the state will begin to unravel and stare every politician in the face as old injuries resurface.

How do you make Senator Ned Nwoko forget his life dream of helping to create Anioma State, which Sheriff has expressly stated that he does not want as the creation will force him to be governor only of the New Delta which didn’t vote for him and lost woefully to Ovie Omo-Agege in 2023?

How do you make Obarisi Ovie Omo-Agege to forget his dream of ruling Delta state from a party he invested so much to build to the envy of Festus Keyamo and others and which he still controls its structures even as we write. How do you suddenly forget that it was the conspiracy to remove him from the control of APC that gave birth to the disruptive Council of Leaders which provided the excuse to make Tinubu embrace an opposition governor to take over the state.

On the lower level, what do you do with Council Chairmen who won their seats as PDP candidates and now forced into APC? On another plane, how do you pacify PDP Local Government party chairmen who have now been forced into the APC, their former rival party, not as chairmen but as ordinary members in the new party? The truth is beginning to emerge that only the governor, Sheriff Oborevwori and his benefactor Ifeanyi Okowa are the only beneficiaries of this inconsiderate and false defection to APC.

The new arrangement in APC has effectively alienated the two popular politicians with the largest mass following in the state; Ned Nwoko and Obarisi Ovie Omo-Agege. No matter Sheriff’s claim to leadership, these are the two politicians who stand out with their individual mass followership in Delta state and they have been shunted aside in the new development. The others, including Sheriff Oborevwori himself, hide under the group identity of a political party. Sheriff on his own popularity, cannot win election in Osubi his hometown without hiding under the identity of a political party. But while Ned Nwoko can hold Delta North in thrall, Ovie Omo-Agege can beat any comer in the two senatorial districts of Central and South.

Soon and very soon, every politician in the state will begin to run back to their old dug-outs and old walls will be rebuilt to return the state to its status quo ante. It is now increasingly evident that the two parties have lost both their souls and their defining attributes Because of Sheriff’s defection. The two parties cannot remain the way they presently are going into the elections of 2027. Politics in Delta state cannot be forced to remain in a troubled and inconvenient marriage and remain that way into the 2027 elections. Something strong and powerful will happen and an apocalypse will follow.

Delta state was conquered by Bola Tinubu through a diabolic sleight of hand, a Yoruba man defeated all the politicians in the state without a fight, through the treachery of Festus Keyamo and his College of Leaders in APC. They fell to the antics of a Yoruba President who wants to rule Nigeria without winning elections in Delta state and who has an eye on the money of the state for the 2027 elections. A Fulani used your money in 2023, now is the turn of a Yoruba man?
@basilokoh.