The Delta State governorship election has come and gone. The winners have been celebrating, while the losers are kicking and crying. Observers must have seen that the campaign for the Delta State governorship seat was bitter and destructive. Too much toxicity was brought into the campaign. Those who know the electoral history of Delta State agree that it is the most bitter of all the campaigns the State has known in its thirty-two years of existence. In the 2023 election, with the exception of that of Lagos State, the governorship election of Delta State was the most confrontational. Looking back, only one man was responsible for the hate and bile that characterized the election and that man is Senator Ovie Omo-Agege the defeated and beaten governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The other governorship candidates in the election namely, Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Kenneth Gbagi of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Great Ogboru of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Mr. Ken Pella of the Labour Party (LP) ran issues-based campaigns and as much as possible adhered to the rules of the game, but not Omo-Agege who saw the election as war.
Omo-Agege’s biggest undoing is his character deficit. He told lies, distorted facts, issued threats and simply became a lose canon. He took too much for granted and threw caution to the wind. He even held meetings with civil servants in the State where he derided the sitting governor. His promises soon became lies as he went on promising the same things to different communities again and again. What he displayed during the campaign was true to type with the character which he exhibited while in the public service of Delta State from 2003 to 2007. The people of Delta State knew him then as duplicitous and desperate. He made attempts to portray himself as a changed man, but as the campaigns went on and he lied, made promises and threatened, the people then knew that it was the same Omo-Agege of the duplicitous and desperate character.
The people rightly concluded that it would be too dangerous to make a duplicitous and desperate man like Omo-Agege governor so they rejected him.
Omo-Agege brought in too much hate, bitterness and bile into his campaign that he forgot to tell Deltans what he would do. He owned a badly imagined and poorly crafted manifesto revolving around the EDGE of disaster and BANDits. He forgot to explain his manifesto as he poured bile and hatred on Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, Hon. Oborewvori and the PDP which was the political party that made him. The majority of Deltans became uncomfortable and reasoned that a man with such venom and bitterness will destroy the socio-political fabric of the State. So, their verdict for him was rejection.
Another very significant reason why Omo-Agege lost is what the whole of Delta State, even among his own Urhobo people, consider as his major sin against Delta State which is his constant and sustained rejection of zoning and rotation of the governorship. Delta State is a multi-ethnic state and to ensure fairness, equity and justice, the people opted for rotational governorship. But Omo-Agege rejected this arrangement and has since 2006 taken part in every governorship election in the State except in 2019 when he manipulated the Delta North slot for Ogboru.
The general thinking among the people of Delta State is that a man who opposed rotation which is the guiding spirit of the State cannot be governor of the State.
They are also aware of Omo-Agege’s hegemonic plan to make sure that only the Urhobo rule Delta State in perpetuity. This is a major reason why they rejected him during the election. The reason why he didn’t win any local government area in both Delta North and Delta South senatorial districts are not farfetched. Both districts rejected him for not recognizing them as equal stakeholders in Delta State.
A look at his standing in the Urhobo nation also shows that he is not widely accepted. As a Senator holding brief for the Urhobo nation of twenty-four clans, Omo-Agege chose to locate all the five major projects for the district in his small Orhomuru-Orogun of less than one hundred and fifty people. So, the larger Urhobo nation also rejected him at the polls. Omo-Agege was a branded scam who told the people that he had a cure for all their problems. He was like a gbogbolose medicine man that has a cure for every ailment, but couldn’t cure any. The people saw through Omo-Agege’s many duplicities.
He accused Okowa of borrowing, yet he was approving loans for President Buhari to the extent that Nigeria’s debt hit 46 trillion naira. Omo-Agege has also approved another 800 million dollars loan for Buhari with just one month to go. Yet, he was crying wolf for Delta State. Omo-Agege’s tampering with the money for the payment for surveillance job, the money for the repair of federal roads in Edo and Delta States, the money for the federal polytechnic came to public knowledge and the people said no this man can’t be our governor. Omo-Agege is a bull in a China shop and this is why he destroyed the APC in Delta State especially in Delta North and Delta South. He was an only tree and the monkey cannot jump with just one tree.
Omo-Agege was not just defeated at the polls, but he was beaten as he won only four out of the twenty-five local governments. The celebration that broke out all over Delta State when the final results were announced spoke to two things: the popular acceptance of Oborevwori and the massive rejection of Omo-Agege.
