Yesterday, April 4, 2023 in paid advertisements in some traditional newspapers and online, Tonye Timi, Deputy Director, Media & Publicity of the APC Campaign Organisation, who recently sought greener pastures in the camp of the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege, the defeated candidate of the All Progressives Congress, in the March 18th governorship election in Delta State, wrote: MIDENO BAYAGBON AND FRED LATIMORE AS SLUMDOGS SEEKING NEW JOBS WITH A MAN OF THE STREET.
In it he accused Mideno Bayagbon of being among a coterie of media rookies, trampling bogeymen and a hatchet writer, who are desperately angling to be appointed to manage the media portfolio of the Governor -elect of Delta State, the Rt. Hon Sheriff Oborevwori. He said: “Mideno Bayagbon, Fred Latimore Oghenesivbe are already masturbating over the possibilities of new jobs and new titles” and so many other inanities.
Many of us have known Timi Tonye for close to 20 years. In all of that time, he has not failed to impress as one who would go to any length, do anything, to curry favours of his targeted political benefactors. He has made hanging around the perimeters of power in Asaba his sole occupation. A paper weight in Ijaw and Delta State politics, he is currently trying his best to ingratiate himself to the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege, who was trounced silly in the March 18th governorship election in Delta State by Sheriff Oborevwori.
With no appointment or patronage from the Governor Ifeanyi Okowa government in the last four years (apart from being appointed as a member of a reconciliation committee to Isoko land), and with the calculation that Chief James Ibori’s anointed candidate will eventually get the ticket, he easily defected. When that prospect dimmed, he swallowed his own vomit and sought economic refuge in the camp of Ovie Omo-Agege, a man, who before now, he had no respects for and spoke about disparagingly. Even now, when he is not within earshot of his new principal, he has no kind words. There are copious evidences.
No doubt, it is his right to associate with whomever and wherever he feels his political and economic fortunes can be buttered. That has been his operating mode over the years. Lacking character, reliability and stability, Timi Tonye is a man with no known pedigree. You are his friend when you can help push his economic and political interest. For now, he sees Omo-Agege as his next meal ticket. Give him one year of no appointment and no patronage, Omo-Agege will automatically incur his wrath even as he stealthily schemes to return to the PDP.
So when he made grandiose accusations in his ill digested diatribe, apparently in reply to Bayagbon’s article last week: “Why and How Ovie Omo-Agege lost in Delta State”, he was only displaying what he has over the years come to be known for: desperation, lack of integrity and low quality, of what is now commonly known in Nigerian parlance as anywhere belly face politics.
In the said article, Bayagbon had dispassionately examined the reasons Senator Ovie Omo-Agege did not and could not have won the elections. One of these reasons is that light weight politicians, like Timi Tonye, who have no grassroots support, scammed him into thinking they have political capital. Most of them failed woefully to win their units and wards, not to talk of their local government areas. In Patani, where he is from, he is seen as inconsequential and of no electoral value. Those who matter at the grassroots there delivered Patani local government to the PDP.
Unable to controvert the solid reasons Bayagbon adduced for his principal losing the election, Timi Tonye resorts to abuses and insults which speaks volume of the content of his persona and character quotient. Why not speak to the issues and points raised?
Timi’s height of arrogance knows no limit. He arrogates to himself the right to decide for Bayagbon who to support in the politics of Delta State. He luxuriates in his own self-importance while parading voluminous, ignoble ignorance.
For someone whose livelihood revolves around hanging around Asaba and scrounging on his wife and others, how can he deride a man who has a second class upper degree and Master’s degree in political science as someone who can’t read or write? How can he gleefully say this of a man who for the past six years has been the Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly? Why does he laugh at the fact that Sheriff describes himself as a man with excessive local content, as a man of the people, as street wise? They tried painting him as an “uncertificated illiterate” What arrant nonsense!
Timi Tonye attempts to unleash the same lie-lie campaign strategy they used in de-marketing the PDP Governor-elect on Bayagbon in his puerile advertisement. He classifies him as a rookie media man, as a bogey man, a hatchet writer. If stating the unvarnished truth makes Bayagbon any of these in the Lilliputian estimation of this anywhere belly face lackey, he should be left to the court of public opinion to judge. Timi Tonye knows that
