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By Iroroh Frank

Anytime you enter any conversation with Okowa people that involves Ned and their Oga, the first statement you hear from such an individual is, “Okawa made Ned a Senator, Ned is ungrateful, blablabla”. This false narrative must stop. Okowa did not make Ned a Senator; rather, he used Ned to feather his political ambition and benefited immensely from Ned’s brotherly gestures.

Let us go back to the 2011 Delta North Senatorial election, it was Ned VS Okowa,
Ned won Okowa in Ika South, Ukwuani, Ndokwa West and Ndokwa East Local Government Areas. It was the manipulation from Aniocha/Oshimili that gave Okowa victory.

Take it from me:
I was the Ika North East LGA coalition officer of DPP for the Senate election. Ned ran the election under the party that was the time of Delta Coalition for Change (DCC), when a group of aggressive PDP members opposed to Uduaghan’s lackluster administration sought his removal from office, they joined forces with DPP.
The group was led by the late Ijaw patriarch, Chief E K Clark.
I was sympathetic to the coalition and I have the records of what happened. Despite all the rigging, Ned embarrassed Okowa in Ika North East LGA.

So, having wrestled with Ned, even up to the Supreme Court. Okowa knows who Ned is, the forces he pulls on the national and international stages, and the huge crowds he commands at the grassroots level in Delta North Senatorial Zone. With this back in his mind, Okowa became fearful of Ned because he saw him as a big rival who would pose a serious challenge to his political aspirations.

Then comes the ANIOMA AGENDA, ANIOMA FOR GOVERNOR OF DELTA 2015.
Parties were reconciled in the spirit of the quest for a common goal. Ned played a vital role in the emergence of Okowa as Delta State governor of Anioma extraction, both in funding and in occupying leadership positions in Okowa’s campaigns. In all, it must be noted that none of Ned’s supporters were included in the Okowa’s cabinet, and Ned never sought a contract from Okowa throughout his 8-year tenure as governor of Delta State.

The 2019 senatorial election came, and Ned indicated interest in the race. He consulted Okowa and went around to meet the people the Ekwueme asked him to meet. I accompanied him to my LGA, Ika North East, where we met the people Okowa directed Oga to consult, we were happy because the reception accorded us was assuring.

On the day of the party’s Senatorial primary, held on 2nd October 2018, we gathered at the cenotaph, Asaba. As delegates filed out LGA by LGA for the accreditations, I noticed that the majority of the PDP delegates from my LGA, Ika North East were illiterate old men and women. The young brilliant men and women in the party were left out.

It was in the middle of the election that we understood the reason they picked Illiterate delegates.

They were showing them who to vote for and where to vote, in most cases voting on their behalf. That was how they rigged the 2018 PDP senatorial Primary. They picked stack illiterates, those they can easily manipulate.

In that primary, it was the manipulation of the officers of Ika North East PDP delegates that gave Nwaoboshi the 2019 Delta North PDP senatorial ticket.

We know who pulled the string, even when he was said to be far away in Port Harcourt organizing the PDP National Convention and even when he openly declared his neutrality in the primary election. We know that he is a tortoise, a tortoise that cuts a tree in the bush only to come out on the road to ask, “who is cutting that tree in the bush”. The man who serves a god that does not forgive or forget the past.

After the announcement of Nwaoboshi as the winner of the primary. I courageously went to one of Okowa’s men to find out the reasons behind the charade they just put up. He wasted no time to tell directly, that “The system does not want Ned, saying that Ned is too powerful and that if he is sent to the Senate, they will not be able to control him, he will overshadowed them, that he will not step down for their leader in the 2023 Delta North Senate.
“We can handle Nwaoboshi, he is a lesser evil”, my friend told me to point blank.
Ironically, Nwaoboshi dumped them as soon as he was reelected back to the Senate, the lesser evil struck them first.

Even after the manipulation to deny Ned the ticket he went on to launch the most ambitious reelection campaign for Okowa’s. He launched the famous Operation Let Return Okowa (ORO) campaign.

Then comes the 2023 general elections. I was in my Oga (Ned’s) compound at Idumuje Ugboko one day when some people I easily recognized were Okowa’s men ‘invaded his house’. They came like an invading Army, chased some of us away, and took control of everything.

Luckily the same man who told me that the system does not support Ned’s senatorial aspiration in 2019, saw me and realized that I just caught him eating his vomit, shamefully started mumbling and told me, “Bro, we have been directed to deliver Ned to the Senate, we do whatever our leader directs us to do”.
I gave him a weak smile and left.
“Deliver Ned” is what they sell to their gullible supporters, but that was not the reason. They came to beg Ned to enter the Senate race under PDP to bail Okowa out from the troubling waters his greed has pushed him into.

Recall that at the time, Okowa was going for the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria under Atiku; he was pushing his daughter for an assembly position and, at the same time, going for a third term as governor of Delta using a puppet.

His situation was like that of a greedy cement loader, who thinks he alone can off-load a trailer load of cement and collect all the money for himself. Just picture a man with two bags of cement on his head and one each at his armpits. A man in such a situation needs help, and he desperately needs one; hence, he dispatches his boys to go and beg Ned to come to his aid.

This was what happened; the PDP emperor needed Ned to help him energize voters in Delta North because he knew Ned commanded a massive followership in Anioma.

Now read me very clearly; if PDP had not fielded Ned as its Delta North senatorial candidate, we would have encouraged him to pick the LP ticket since Nwaoboshi already had the APC ticket, and the result would have been devastating to the crumbling umbrella.

PDP lost the Senate seats in both Delta South and Delta Central zones, and the Ejeuene, as a sitting governor, lost Delta State in the presidential election to Peter Obi, (lost to three people twitting in a room).
Ned won the 2023 Delta North Senate election because his support base cut across party lines; he got massive support from LP, APC, and PDP, and Okowa benefited from Ned’s 2023 massive campaign.

Though he lost his dead-on-arrival VP bid, he succeeded in securing a third term as governor of Delta State via his toy; his daughter became a House Assembly member and the moron he wants to remain snoring for a good sixteen years at the green chamber.

Nwokolo, who allegedly brought thugs to disrupt a meeting of traditional rulers, who came for a briefing on the Anioma State Creation was returned for a fourth term.

Anyway, now that our super Senator, the Anioma touch bearer, has dumped the demons and joined the progressives for the economic and social emancipation of Anioma land, I do not think there is any further need to continue debating on this issue. Okowa”’s supporters should go to him and encourage him to pick the 2027 PDP Delta North Senate tick and let us watch Ned Vs Okowa 2nd round fight

You can fool some people sometimes but you cannot fool all the people, all the time.

* Frank Iroroh is the coordinator of the now RESTRUCTURED, REFOCUSED, AND REJUVENATED NEDITE GLOBAL MOMENT. He is based in Asaba