By Basil Okoh
The chatter in the banquet hall of the Government House Asaba was muffled and subdued. The man in the blue George wrapper and the big blue lace shirt with a blue fedora suddenly was talking above the animated chatter and people nearby heard him.
“Na Omo-Agege bring us come here. The man nor gree talk make everybody know where im stand”.
The meeting in Government House Asaba on Sunday was driven by fear, exclusion and anxiety over one man’s silence that it can be called a coven of the political defectors of Delta state. It included those who instigated the defection and those who actually defected. Many were not allowed to enter the grounds and those allowed were asked to drop their phones. There was no recordings at the venue and hardly a picture was taken by attendees. Politics is supposed to be the art of embracing the people but the meeting at Banquet Hall Asaba demonstrated the mastery of exclusion.
The talk in the hall was that the silence of Omo-Agege is defining the governorship elections of 2027 in Delta State. Nobody can be sure of the political direction of the state until Omo-Agege makes his stand known. Will there be a contested governorship primary in APC Delta State or not? No one can tell. Nobody can also tell the stand of the presidency or National Working Committee of the APC on Delta state governorship primary. Even Sheriff the governor is groping for reassurance that there will be no challenger and he will be adopted by the consensus mode of primary. And his restiveness over the matter is the reason why such a meeting was called for self promotion and self assurance.
Sheriff lacks confidence in securing the APC governorship ticket in a free and fair primary, which is causing his restlessness. He appears to be jumping the gun by declaring himself the APC governorship candidate in Delta State, preempting the primary process of the National Working Committee. If he were confident, he wouldn’t be rushing ahead, instigating motions for sole candidacy, and demanding that the National Working Committee print a single nomination form. While he may not want to appear as though he’s begging to be the APC candidate, his actions suggest a lack of self-assurance in his potential nomination.
His restiveness gives away his lack of confidence. He knows he hasn’t succeeded in winning the confidence of the majority of party members. He’s also aware that he remains a stranger in the party, despite Festus Keyamo, the Minister for Aviation, and other Delta State APC leaders’ assurances. He continues to assure his fellow decampees that he’s in charge, but they know he’s not.
He is working too hard to convince Deltans that he is in charge of the Delta APC, but the fear of Omo-Agege hangs over the party, invincible yet with a heavy and pervading presence like Arabian incense. Sheriff was forced to summon this secret meeting because Omo-Agege’s presence and influence won’t just go away. The meeting was to assure party leaders for the umpteenth time that he is in charge and will stand unopposed as the party’s governorship candidate in the next election. But did that impress or convince anyone in that hall? Again, no one can tell, even with all the money that’s been spent.
Another aspect of Sheriff’s conundrum is that party members know that APC was a deeply unpopular party in the state until Omo-Agege took it over, washed it, and changed its negative narrative. But the problem now, even as the party is the ruling party in the state and country, is that Sheriff is not improving the party’s popularity in the state; in fact, the numbers keep plummeting. So the man has a genuine reason to fear the invincible hand of Omo-Agege as the cause of his declining popularity, even as a sitting governor. His fear is that at some point, President Tinubu will demand that something be done about the deepening unpopularity of APC in Delta State, and his governorship re-election bid will unravel.
Bola Tinubu’s only hope of winning the 2027 election in Delta State is to field a popular governorship candidate. What he needs to know is that Sheriff and the Delta APC are hoping to ride on Tinubu’s coattails and federal might to help influence the election results and declare Sheriff the winner. This is why Sheriff ties himself to Tinubu every time he talks about the 2027 election and not at any other time. Sheriff doesn’t trust his own efforts or fortunes.
So the bigger problem for APC is that even if Sheriff is made the governorship candidate without contest, which is highly unlikely and possibly not even possible, he’ll be riding on Tinubu’s assumed capacity to deliver the election, not on his own popularity. So while Tinubu is hoping that the governor can create popularity for him in Delta State, the governor himself is hoping to ride on the president’s back to win. The irony is that Sheriff is not popular with the electorate in Delta State. The reason for engineering the defection of governors into APC is so that the defecting governors will use their offices to win elections for Tinubu in their states, but they have a weak link in Delta – a governor who can offer no such guarantees.
In the 2023 election in Delta State, it was the governorship candidate Omo-Agege who was popularizing Bola Tinubu. In 2027, it will be the other way around if Sheriff is allowed to take the APC ticket in the governorship election. Sheriff cannot improve the electoral fortunes of Tinubu in Delta State and definitely won’t have the organizational capacity to win the election.
Tinubu is encouraging defection because he needs the governors to be on his side to help win elections in their states. He needs their popularity and the resources they control to win elections.
So, Sheriff is just bandying Tinubu’s name to win the support of APC members in Delta State, to give the impression that he is loyal to Tinubu and is on one-on-one terms with him. But that is not true. Sheriff’s contact with Tinubu is very limited. It is also not true that the national hierarchy of the party has given Sheriff total control of the Delta APC. The national leadership of APC sees through his gambit to reap where he did not sow. They also know that as a result of his unpopularity, he is a man living in fear of a better candidate, and all his political actions are governed by that fear of Ovie Omo-Agege.
Part of the reason the people of the state don’t like Sheriff is that they see him as part of the old guard. He is too attached to the Okowa coterie. The Urhobo people don’t like him playing sissy to Okowa, and Delta North was pissed off with him until his recent attempts to make amends through developmental investments in Asaba and Agbor. But he’s grasping at straws.
So the Sobotie/Sheriff faction are actually hoping that Omo-Agege leaves the party, allowing them to benefit from his frustration. They have tried to force an eviction but couldn’t. Omo-Agege’s silence has left them perplexed and in a political quandary. No one has been able to read the man’s mind for 2027. But they know that Omo-Agege still commands a large population of loyal voters in the state and also commands the respect of the national caucus of the party.
Sheriff at the banquet hall meeting gave voice to his worries when he announced that he was not going to negotiate with anyone on his candidacy for the APC. But the truth is that he will, for his own interest, but definitely not without consideration for President Tinubu’s interest. After all, he has not offered any favors to APC Delta and should make no claims to any privileges from the party. At the right moment, the rule book will be thrown at him.
Two things inform politicians’ behavior in Delta State. The first is unyielding optimism: “Tinubu did it before, even when he wasn’t yet president. He will do it again as president,” so we hang on to him. The second is incapacity for change: “This is how we do it in Nigerian politics, and it’s how we’ll do it now. When you have a sitting governor, he’s given the right of first refusal for a second term. Not even Tinubu can change that.”
And when you remind them that Obaseki was changed in Edo State, they lecture you: “That was a very different scenario, you hear?” But every situation or “scenario” is different. And again, you remind them that Sheriff is not an APC governor, and they spend the rest of the time staring at you vacuously, as if it’s a sudden realization.
@basilokoh
