By Michael Tidi
Right from its inception, hardly any week has gone by without one form of destructive criticism or malicious attack on the Governor Ifeanyi Okowa led administration in Delta State appearing on print or social media. Some rather unfortunate developments of the last few weeks are the latest installment in this trend and have only served to expose the opposition in Delta as one utterly lacking in credibility.
First it was a case of crucifying the Governor on account of a trip the Vice President made to Delta State in which the Governor was a mere passenger. Everyone conveniently forgot that the Vice President was at Opuraja in Okpe for a period of time longer than he spent either at Oporoza or Aghofen.
No one averted their minds to the fact that they were not with the Governor or Vice President in their vehicle and that even if the Governor had pointed out to the Vice President, the need to stop over at Orerokpe, Effurun and Ughelli, there was absolutely nothing he could have done to ensure that this was the case, if the Vice President, being pressed for time within the limited timeframe of his visit, could not have acceded to the Governor’s request.
No one bothered to place themselves in the Governor’s position to ask whether in such a situation, the Governor should have physically dragged the Vice President to visit all the places he, as Chief Executive of the entire state, would have wanted him to touch.
Even more importantly, no one bothered to ask, how come the kingpins of the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state, who are always boasting of being closer to the Vice President than anyone else to the extent of claiming that they can always use their connections to undo their fellow party members in the state, did not ensure that while the Vice President was in the state, they impressed on him the need to visit their own traditional rulers.
If, in the build up to the visit, some Itsekiris had been foresighted enough to lobby the Vice President’s office for at least a brief stopover at their own domain, why did the all-in-all of APC in the state not equally lobby for similar visits to their own traditional rulers, more so when they practically reside in Abuja always lobbying for lucrative posts which they then clannishly ensure they allocate to persons from their own hometowns?
It has to be because these so-called leaders probably have no regard for their own traditional rulers that they didn’t bother to lobby the Vice President to stopover at their palaces. Yet as soon as genuinely patriotic Urhobos began to lament the oversight, they latched on to what was in fact their own shortcoming as a new opportunity for attacking Governor Okowa.
It is not everything that one might expect a Governor to reveal in his interaction with the general public. Whereas, there is nothing the Governor could have done to force a Vice President to visit traditional rulers he wants him to visit, there is something the APC leaders and their cohorts could have done to ensure that at the planning stage of the trip, they ensured that a visit to their own traditional rulers was on the card and that enough time was created within the timeframe of the trip to carry out all necessary courtesy calls.
Just when our beloved Urhobo brothers and sisters were beginning to ask themselves whether this is really the Governor’s fault or the fault of their own fellow Urhobo so-called APC leaders, the chief sponsors of rumour mongering and ethnic jingoism in the state, realized the game was up and simply manufactured another ridiculous rumour from thin air to divert attention from their guilt.
That was how the online media suddenly became agog with a story credited to the Nations News which reported that a South-South Governor used his mistress to steal/launder $10 million. Before anyone could say jack, the opposition shamelessly dragged in the name of Senator Dr. Arthur Ifeanyi Okowa, into what is at best a speculative story and at worst the job of paid hirelings.
The story is one that any detective would find to be quite laughable while all the serious lawyers I have spoken with on the issue simply shook their heads in disgust. Little wonder then that even among the more intellectually oriented members of the opposition in the state, none have been seen weighing in on the matter, apparently having written it off as just another cock-and-bull story more appropriate to a motor-park or local village square.
As we go forward, Deltans should brace themselves for more shameless falsehood from the stable of the opposition in the state. Since they are so fixated on 2019 that the telling of lies has become their chief manifesto, I can only say that come 2019 it is not how many lies they have told that will count but how many projects Okowa can point to. As for projects, he already has more than enough to point to with even more to come.
- Tidi is resident in Warri
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