By Fred Latimore Oghenesivbe
Immediately after 2019 governorship election and the landslide re-election victory of the governor, Senator Dr Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa, the fragile and epileptic Delta State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, started gasping for breath.
The APC lost all bye-elections, all council elections and have also been losing members to PDP on a regular basis. The reason is not far fetched, the APC is known for blame games cum abysmal performance anchored on gross incompetence and mismanagement of the nation’s resources. It failed woefully to keep promises made to Nigerians in 2015 and 2019 respectively.
President Mohammadu Buhari, in 2015 while addressing newsmen at a Presidential campaign rally said it was inhuman to make Nigerians pay N97 per litre of fuel and assured that if voted into power his administration will fix all refineries and ensure that Nigerians pay N5 per litre of petrol within the life span of his first tenure. It never happened, failed promises. Fuel under Buhari is N165 per litre, soon to be increased to N350 per litre.
Buhari made similar bogus promises in the energy sector, security, fight against corruption and in all facets of our national life. He referred to fuel subsidy as PDP “Scam” and promise to disgrace the then national government by exposing the nonexistent of fuel subsidy. He later admitted that fuel subsidy was real. Fight against corruption has become a political tool to fight members of the opposition.
Almost seven years gone, President Buhari made life unbearable for Nigerians, mortgaged the future of this country and Nigerians through multifaceted foreign loans and grossly misappropriated our national wealth, our country is worst for it. Unity in diversity practically eluded our national ethos while ethnic politics and tribal bigotry fractured federal character enshrined in the nation’s federal constitution.
Despite the gross incompetence of the Buhari led national government, Delta State Governor and his team mastered survival strategies via prudent management of resources, and have been able to execute star projects, create jobs and wealth for Deltans.
The good governance strides of governor Okowa, coupled with strategic politics and internal democracy in Delta PDP, had consistently wreaked havoc in APC Delta. The party has been deserted. The few political tacticians struggling to infuse political oxygen in Delta APC recently gave up the futile struggle, and defected to PDP at a Mega Rally held in Asaba last Saturday.
State Party Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Barrister Kingsley Esiso, made it abundantly clear that he will neither sleep nor slumber until his team practically make politics a living hell for Delta APC and her leaders before 2023 general elections.
Esiso who is well know for matching words with action, assured that APC Delta shall become a political moving corpse before 2023 governorship election, and that those who are specialists in negative propaganda and radical politics for power shall be completely rendered powerless in this dispensation.
The Asaba Mega Rally which was beamed live to Nigerians via African Independent Television, AIT, provoked extensive wailing and gnashing of teeth in DSP Ovie Omo-Agege and Olorogun Otega Emerhor’s deserted camps in Delta APC. The Kingsley Esiso political hurricane is obviously wreaking havoc on APC, and have literally shattered the little leftovers of DSP Agege’s 2023 governorship ambition.
Leader of the defectors and former State Chairman of Delta APC, Chief Cyril Abeye Ogodo while speaking to newsmen at the mega rally apologised to Deltans and Nigerians for supporting the greatest enemy of Nigeria, the APC.
The huge success of the PDP Mega Rally, had again unveiled the uncommon visionary leadership of the state party leader and governor of Delta State, Senator Dr Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa, and the superb political craftsmanship of the state party chairman, Barrister Kingsley Esiso.
It is crystal clear that the political future of Delta APC is blurred, hopeless and dark. It is also glaring that majority of Delta APC leaders shall be retired compulsorily from active politics after the general elections in 2023.
Stronger Delta, Let’s Build Together.
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About the writer: Chief Barr. Fred Latimore Oghenesivbe, JP, is the Executive Assistant to Delta State Governor on Communications and Chairman, Coalition for Media Politics and Governance, CMPG.
