Two prominent aides of the Delta State Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, on Wednesday took the newly-registered All Progressives Congress to the cleaners for sponsoring campaigns of calumny against the ruling Peoples Democratic Party administration in the state.
APC had three weeks ago in a signed statement by its Protem Secretary, Engr. Peter Azuka Ofili, accused Uduaghan of sponsoring agents of destabilization to register as members of the party in a desperate bid to sow seeds of discord with its loyalists.
Besides, the party categorically boasted that the oil rich state would be liberated from those it called treasury looters acting the script of former Governor James Onanefe Ibori and holding the oil rich state in hegemony for him.
Irked by this, Uduaghan’s Communication Manager, Paul Odili; and his Special Adviser on Politics (Delta Central), Barrister Fred Majemite, who was the Governor’s former Commissioner for Special Duties (Warri Water Project), lambasted the new party for masquerading in an unholy alliance.
In their separate reactions on Wednesday in Asaba, the state capital, they likened the way and manner the party was launching itself into the state to the birth of an ‘Abiku’ (a child that keeps dying each time he is given birth to), also known as ‘Ogbanje’ in Igbo language.
While Odili said the nomenclature the opposition party had assumed since the advent of democracy in 1999 – defunct Action Congress, Action Congress of Nigeria and now APC, speaks volume about the sincerity of its blueprint for the development of Nigeria.
Majemite ruled out the possibility of APC gaining an inroad in Delta State.
According to Odili, the experience of those who have been plotting the merger party in the past but failed was accompanied by pain, headache and all manner of diseases.
He said: “Do you know what is funny about this APC thing?
“It is like the ‘Abiku’ of a thing, called ‘Ogbanje’ in other tribes.
“Since 1999, every time you keep giving birth to a child and the child dies, you call that ‘Oganje’ but ‘Abiku’ in Yoruba tribe.
“The experience is accompanied by pain, headache and what have you.
“So, this APC is like ‘Abiku’, it is like ‘Ogbanje’.
“Since 1999, it has been metamorphosing from one thing to another.
“Deltans don’t even know what APC stands for because as I speak to you there is no guarantee that you won’t see another group masquerading as APC very soon.
“In many states now, the group is breaking up.
“This is not the first time they are coming up with this merger thing but it has always failed.
“They have been saying they are going to wrestle power from PDP but 14 years down the lane, they are still merging and wrestling power.
“The best they have succeeded in doing is to keep changing their names, holding merger meetings and failing to wrestle power.
“If you look at it critically, the alliance is gradually breaking up.”
Majemite said APC must be day dreaming when it said it would snatch Delta State from the PDP in 2015.
He added: “I don’t know how they intend to achieve their dream in Delta State, especially when it is commonly known everywhere that the way and manner the PDP network works in transforming the state through massive projects here and there have settled 2015 case for it.
“It is a political talk.
“It will get anywhere.
“When President Goodluck Jonathan says ‘by 2015, opposition will have nothing to say’, it is like he has Delta State in mind.
“What do we see now?
“Characters that have not been on the ground are now masquerading as candidates to win election.
“Although God can make something out nothingness, I don’t know how APC wants to get anywhere by 2015.
“I don’t know what they have to give.
“They don’t exist in this state.”
Majemite, jostling on PDP platform to replace late Senator Pius Ewherido for the Delta Central Senatorial District seat, said opposition parties died with the painful death of Ewherido two months ago.
He recalled how PDP in 2011 lost the district to opposition Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) over in-house fighting, which led to mass departure of aggrieved party loyalists.
He said: “Their grievances made them to work against the interest of the party.
“One of the grouse then was imposition of candidates, but after the election, some of us came back to the drawing board to address some of the challenges and asked ourselves some few questions on why we failed and we strategized towards 2015.
“Now that those who left us have all come back to the party, PDP is going to be forceful.
“I am also happy that the Governor of the state, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, is a man of peace and a bridge-builder.
“He means well for the people of Delta State.
“Even the oppositions within and outside the party (PDP) are now happy about the development of the state and if the government is doing well, they won’t have reason to vote against his administration.
“So, the APC that just came up is going to be just one of the political parties in Nigeria.
“Now that we have one house in Delta State, I just don’t know how it wants to thrive in the state.
“We (PDP) can contest with any party, not to talk of a party that has just been registered.”
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