Who has believed what we have heard and to whom has the secret of the Delta State politics been revealed?
That the peoples’ general, Chief Great Ogboru, of the Democratic Peoples Party has joined forces to hatch the alleged couched conspiracy of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party ahead of the 2015 governorship election in the state oil rich state?
Did Ogboru bow to the ruling party’s tacticians’ plot to use him to scuttle the All Progressives Congress’s political fortune in the oil rich state and end the alleged age-long hegemony of former Governor James Onanefe Ibori’s reign in the state?
Ogboru, who is said to be holding the highest record of governorship elections’ contest and disputation in Nigeria, refused to collapse his party structure into that of APC during the merger that gave birth to the party, has now merged with the Labour Party, a party being viewed by many in the country as an arm of the ruling PDP, to succeed Governor Emmauel Uduaghan next year.
Why the move by the leadership of the APC, especially the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, before the October 12, 2013 Delta Central Senatorial District bye-election in the state to convert Ogboru to the party failed is still a mystery. The Eagle Online gathered that if Ogboru had accepted the plot, the bye-election would have been used as a litmus test by the arch-rival party to test the depth of political waters of the state.
“But since the peoples’ general failed to attach strong attachment to the conspiracy to use him or any of his ardent loyalists to fill the vacuum created by the sudden death of Senator Pius Ewherido of the DPP, which Senator Emmanuel Aguariavwodo of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party later won,” an APC source revealed, “APC regarded him as a stubborn grasshopper that will soon end up in the belly of a fowl.”
Now that Ogboru has joined the Labour Party to realize his age-long dream of becoming the governor of the Finger of God state, does that mean he has joined ruling PDP and by extension tantamount to the doom prediction of the APC?
Speculation were rife after both the APC and the DPP lost to the ruling party that Mohammed and company failed to secure Ogboru’s confidence because the tactics they deployed, that is, being clever by half by not coming straight on what the bargain holds in stock for Ogboru in the build up to 2015 governorship election in the state, tore their parley apart. The conspiracy eventually hit the rock.
The resultant effect was that APC fielded Otega Emerhor for the senatorial bye-election, even as the ‘camatose’ DPP shattered his votes with its Ede Dafinone, who came third in the race.
A school of thought soon rose up in the state, saying: “Ogboru failed to join APC with his teeming supporters because his hands were tied with the choice of Dafinone.” He maintained: “It will be difficult for the peoples’ general to swap Emerhor for Dafinone should the merger be consummated.”
Shortly after the DPP lost the senatorial election to PDP, it became obvious to the leadership of the party that DPP may not be able to be a political vehicle on which Ogboru would succeed Governor Uduaghan in 2015, hence, the need to think fast for an alternative platform.
Reading the body language of his foot-soldiers, particularly after the Supreme Court consigned his 2011 election petition case against Governor Uduaghan to the dustbin, the party, led by Ogboru, swung into consultations and meetings on the possible way of negotiating with the leadership of the Labour Party on a merger.
Recently, the DPP sprung a surprise. The party dumped APC tacticians and publicly announced that Labour Party is now the platform through which the state will be liberated from the ‘PDP cabal’.
Ogboru’s new found love with LP, political analysts said, may not be unconnected with surprises that are associated with partisan politics in the state, as according to them, since the advent of democracy in 1999, politics in the state is strictly a game of conspiracy, hence, ‘conspiracy’ and ‘game’ became useful theoretical frameworks for scoring political goals in the state.
A political analyst maintained that the hand of the ruling party may not be far-fetched from the recent development. He recalled what transpired before, during and after the Court of Appeal ordered rerun governorship election of January 10, 2011 in the state, and the aftermath of April 24 governorship election of 2011 in the state when PDP planted Ovie Omo-Agege, a man from Delta Central Senatorial District with Ogboru and the former Secretary to the State Government to Ibori, in the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria to dismantle his plans and scatter his votes in Urhobo ethnic nationality, and thereafter forwarded his name as ministerial nominee to President Goodluck Jonathan, but was rejected.
The analyst said: “Don’t x-tray what is happening to Ogboru today with ordinary eye. ‘The more you look, the less you see’ is going to play out in 2015. Labour Party and the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) are arms of the PDP. Ask me why Ogboru ran to Labour Party? Why not APC that wooed him for a long time? If Ogboru truly wants to stay by the opposition he had professed for a decade and half, it shouldn’t have taken him a night before joining APC in their progressive struggle. Don’t be surprised, Ogboru is a PDP stooge in Labour Party ahead of 2015.”
But Ogboru, flanked by the former state chairman his party, Chief Tony Ezeagwu, at the country home of the former Special Adviser to the Delta State Government on Security, now an Isoko youths’ leader, Chief Fred Obey, in Ozoro, Isoko North Local Government Area of the state, the the political territory of the incumbent SSG to Governor Uduaghan, talk of Comrade Ovuozorie Macaulay, confirmed that “the slogan of the DPP is dead. It is now Labour Party.”
Obey who described Ogboru as “the most no-nonsense governorship aspirant I ever met”, did not only put pundits wrong over the speculation that he was been sponsored against APC via Labour Party ahead of 2015 governorship race, he decried the undue supremacy impose on the state by few cabals, who he said “are working day and night plundering the state’s resources.”
While Governor Uduaghan, whom Ogboru has given credence to his statement by confirming that DPP is dead, had told those who care to listen during the thanksgiving party of his final victory against Ogboru at the Supreme Court, was still basking in the euphoria, the peoples’ general roared back, vowing not to leave his teeming supporters as orphans, conscientizing them, “do not despair, do not shed tears, and do not have any regret because with God all things are possible”, maintaining that “the journey may be delayed but Labour Party would take us to the promised land”.
Deltans wait to see whether he is truly a spoiler or a genuine contender that he was in the defunct DPP.
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