HOW TINUBU TOOK A BATTLE AXE TO DELTA POLITICS
Basil Okoh
Politics in Delta state has fallen apart, pushed to disintegration by Bola Tinubu and only a deft political hand can bring it back to function and dignity again. And deft politicians are a rare breed in Delta state.
Bola Tinubu’s unilateral invitation of governor Sheriff Oborevwori into APC along with the horde of PDP members will go down in history as the most confounding and consequential political gambit in the history of Delta state. That the actions of an outsider will shake down the entire political establishment of the state, confound and overwhelm its structures of governance is at once outstanding and shameful to the state. It reveals how brittle and ungrounded politics in the state has been and how disunited and shamelessly unpatriotic our politicians have become.
Tinubu’s disruption is without precedence in the state and the emerging impact of his action has been to disrupt the political culture of the state and force realignments. As the situation unravels, it is beginning to reveal a frightening proposition, the emergence and hardening of anti-Tinubu sentiments among the politicians and the growing commitment to shield the state from external control. The prospect that the political future of the state is going to be controlled by one man from outside the state has raised strong opposition among the young politicians who hitherto had no love for Bola Tinubu as shown by the results of the 2023 presidential election.
Tinubu’s action in the state has left the politicians scrambling for new formations and alliances shielded from such catastrophic control by someone who has no stakes in the survival or progress of the state but wants to use the state to serve his own ambition. So many citizens inside and outside the state feel shamed that Tinubu can reduce Delta to his personal vassal state. And the blowback against him is building.
Tinubu did not make his move to help political development in Delta, nor even to help APC win elections in the state. APC since 2015 has had an impressive organic growth in the state and was poised after winning two out of three senatorial zones, to win the governorship election in the state in 2027. PDP knew it was living out its last tenure and so Governor Sheriff, goaded on by Festus Keyamo, was desperate to use his governorship office as a bargaining chip to seek remission for crime and move over to firmer ground in APC to assume the leadership he did not earn.
By his action in the state, Tinubu does not care who rules Delta state as long as he bags the state in the 2027 presidential election. But he may soon find out that bagging the unpopular governor Sheriff Oborevwori does not translate to bagging the state in the presidential election.
Tinubu pursues his self interest based on his own cold calculations for winning the 2027 presidential election. He took such insulting action in Delta state because he lost respect for its politicians. With politicians from PDP and APC exhibiting a complete lack of dignity and self-respect, scurrying to him for political intervention and to help resolve internal party quarrels, Tinubu lost respect for politicians in the state and plotted how to use them and the state to serve his own political purpose. Ditto for many other states in the Niger Delta. Bola Tinubu would not dare do in his own Osun or Oyo, PDP states in the Yoruba Southwest, what he did in Delta state.
Those who say that the defection has helped to give Okowa and Sheriff a get out of jail card are talking too soon and will find out in the end that the move has helped more to galvanize public conscience against the two. It has now been brought to public consciousness that it was Okowa and Sheriff’s desperation to avoid reckoning for the plunder of the state, that invited Tinubu’s disgraceful action.
Tinubu believes that taking the governors Sheriff and Okowa into APC is his guarantee to win the presidential election in Delta state in 2027, but will find out in the end that his humiliation of the state has helped only to galvanize the people against him.
The public knows that Tinubu is not interested in winning hearts in order to win votes. He is committed to taking governors who will have to use their influence and state funds to force INEC to write results of elections to make him winner as it happened in Rivers state in 2023. Deltans have the example of what happened in Rivers and how it has now impacted and sullied the state. So Tinubu must begin now to ask himself if he can repeat the escapade in Rivers across the other states. Can these governors have the willpower to do the dirty job Wike did in Rivers? And worse, can they or Nigeria withstand the blow back that will follow these electoral fakeries and violence nationwide?
Bola Tinubu draws a lot of hatred not only in Delta but in all the other states in the South-South region. And no matter what his Ministers and butt licking elite from the region tell him, this hatred remains pervasive in these states. The reason for the hatred is mostly because they do not like the autocracy of Bola Tinubu. The worship of Bola Tinubu and his lack of vision and identifiable goals in his party programs are anathema to the culture of the Niger Delta peoples.
Tinubu’s group has come to be identified with massive electoral corruption and the rule of one man who they do not like. His insulting gambit in Delta has not only proved his hateful autocracy but has also shown Tinubu’s abiding interest in a stranglehold on the state going into the 2027 elections. It has also exposed the limitations and lack of strong will by Delta politicians to oppose Tinubu’s insulting actions on the state.
Most Delta politicians are small minded men with no power of vision and articulation. They live in subordination and in fear of external influences. This is why they are ready always to sucker up to an external big man politician.
In my decades of experience dealing with politicians and political followers in the North, you don’t see a “rankadede” attitude to non-northern politicians. In all my years of studying and living in the north, I never saw an hausa or Fulani man pulling his kinsman down for the benefit of a man of another region or ethnicity. You can never see a quarrel between two northerners on who will make a loyal servant to a southern presidential candidate as Wike and Okowa did in 2022.
Every Northerners presidential campaign has been funded from the stolen funds of a Niger Delta state since the fourth Republic. You can never see a northerner betray his region or his people for the benefit of a southerner as Amaechi, Wike, Ibori, Okowa or Festus Keyamo has done. They adulate and promote their own and have an internal conflict resolution mechanism that holds for all time.
Like crabs trapped in a small pond, Niger Delta politicians are ready to tear each other apart for the benefit of the external big man. They gossip, bear tales, betray and undermine each other to curry favours and endear themselves to the external big man, but will never do anything to advance the cause of their group or regional interests. They will beat each other down for the benefit of a man from another region. They are crabs in an eternal fight for mutual annihilation, all for the benefit of a Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar or Muhammadu Buhari but never for a Goodluck Jonathan.
Make no mistake, our politicians are better educated, better endowed and more resourceful than the external politicians they worship and spend our state resources on but they project an unhelpful attitude of mediocrity, cower before them in negative self-effacement.
You’ll be surprised at how many politicians call to express fear of Bola Tinubu. “Aaah please don’t write like that ooo, the man can harm us ooo”. They absolutely have no regional pride or cultural projection. Only the Ijaw appear to have ethnic pride but that is been taken away from them now. Our politicians live in morbid fear of the man from the big tribes as if their success in politics depend entirely on them and not on their voters at home.
But the northern politician, young or old, would never use demeaning expressions to describe themselves. They are bold, audacious and bow to no one. We know that the average northern youth, male or female is far more politically conscious and assertive and pugnacious than the southern youth. Northern youth are more articulate, driven by ideologies, public morality and beliefs.
From Oshiomhole to Anenih, Wike to Amaechi to Okowa to Fubara, from Godswill Akpabio to Nunieh, it is the sabotage of their people for the benefit of the big tribes that is the recurring theme. So it is the curse of the South-South minorities of Nigeria to live in fear of the big ethnicities. Our annoying rascality’s are limited to our localities, never exhibited on the big national stage. This regressive behaviour is the reason why our politicians have lost our oil wealth, traded our political cohesion and lost the trust of constituents back home. They have no respect for their fellow tribesmen while they worship middling politicians from other regions as gods.
A governor in Delta State Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan spent his eight years in office giving all the big contracts to Yoruba contractors and consultants while out there in the competitive Lagos economy, Delta professionals were beating the Yoruba in every competitive field. Uduaghan transformed his own low self-esteem to a contagious regional disease?
Bola Tinubu, a self-serving Yoruba politician gave permission to Governor Sheriff Oborevwori to join APC in Delta state without first consulting and receiving the consent of his own party men in the state, without even first asking them to work out the terms of union between the parties. He did not even consult the national executive council of his own party over such an epochal move. That offhand nod to Sheriff triggered the total collapse of the political establishment in Delta state.
It is pitiful that the politicians of Delta state don’t even know what hit them or the portent of what’s to come. Bola Tinubu’s action signals the end of of politics as they know it in Delta state. Sheriff is happy that he now leads a bigger platform, but the fluidity of the situation could mean that he is leading nobody because he no longer has a core loyal political base. And no one can trust him with their political future now. He cannot boast of a solid electoral majority now, having lost the PDP platform and having not been blended into the APC. The man who brought him into APC has no power of control in the party. He will get to know this when the time comes and it will be too late to impact the electoral outcome.
Thank goodness, the momentum of a blowback is building and a political resurgence is on the way across the state and on every side of the political divide and in a year, there will be a total realignment of forces and new alliances formed that will shock the nation and upend Tinubu himself.
You needed to see how governor Sheriff Oborevwori was so elated to be seen hobnobbing with President Tinubu like a girl swooning over her favourite rock star. Governor Sheriff Oborevwori believes that it is President Bola Tinubu who will return him as governor of the state and not the voters of Delta state. So he spends a lot of his political capital doing everything to be seen and identified with President Tinubu, taking pictures and recording videos of him with the President. The effort is bringing guffaws and laughter back home but he makes sure that these pictures and videos are spread to everyone to show that Sheriff is with the big man.
Sheriff Oborevwori on the hustings has shown no capacity to rally voters to his cause and no talking point on the political happenings. In the end, he will bring no voters to the ballot box for Bola Tinubu in 2027. The entire charade will be a hollow and unprofitable ritual. Every political pundit in the state knows that Sheriff Oborevwori is looking for a big party to hide his incapacities not a political organization to mobilize or fire up to victory. Sheriff has neither the confidence nor vision to lead any group to victory. He cannot locate the organizational skills to persuade anyone as he does not also have any ennobling belief or vision. There is no reason for anyone to like him.
We have said it in previous writings that Sheriff will lose the governorship election even if he’s made to run from all the political parties put together . Without any organizational skill, Sheriff is just gloating over the big agglomeration of persons put under his leadership and rule. He is not capable of conceptualizing any winning vision or managing people from disparate organizational backgrounds and fusing them into a big winning machine. He is just gloating over his new found importance as governor in a ruling party. And that is what he will keep doing until the election is over.
We await a brave, bold and audacious person to bid for the governorship of Delta.
@basilokoh.
#EOB
