Basil Okoh
“We all need a deeper purpose
One that’s true and bold
The only thing that could hurt us
Is the curse of the fold”.
SHAWN JAMES (The curse of the fold)
“Governor Okowa has, by his action, betrayed the trust reposed on him by his colleagues; the southern governors, the entire good people of southern Nigeria and all well-meaning Nigerians. He has made himself persona non grata, not only, with SMBLF but all citizens who treasure our oneness and yearn for a more united and peaceful Nigeria.”
“Chief (Dr.) Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, OFR, CON
Chief Ayo Adebanjo (Leader, Afenifere).
Dr. Dru Bitrus (President-General, Middle Belt Forum).
Ambassador (Prof.) George Obiozor (President-General, Ohaneze Ndigbo Worldwide).”
Basil Okoh
Governor Ortom of Benue State revealed to us how Atiku chose his presidential running mate between Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa and Barrister Nyesom Wike. In the straw polling conducted by the committee selected to choose the running mate and Vice Presidential candidate of the PDP, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa scored three (3) votes out of seventeen (17) while Barrister Nyesom Wike scored fourteen (14) votes out of seventeen representing 18% and 82% respectively.
Clearly, Wike won the approval of the committee and by extension the endorsement of the entire PDP political party. It was as obvious as daylight that Barrister Wike was the popular choice of the party and the voting population and should therefore be the Vice Presidential candidate of the party.
But Atiku Abubakar bucked popular choice and betrayed the selection committee, the PDP national caucus and the entire members of the PDP and chose instead to roll with the loser, the manifestly unpopular Ifeanyi Okowa as his Presidential running mate.
Why would Atiku Abubakar a supposedly rational man take such a suicidal step?
Money, money and more money.
Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, governor of Delta State and chief custodian of its treasury, willfully made himself the pipeline and conduit to siphon Delta State wealth to fund Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign, in the hope of making himself running mate, Vice-President and Chief Servant to a deluded Atiku Abubakar.
People of Nigeria, this is the principle that will define Atiku’s presidency of your country. He will with Okowa, who obviously purchased the nomination against the result of voting, rule with treachery, subterfuge and betrayal of his party and people of Nigeria.
What the grandees of the Southern and Middle Belt Elders Forum and the stalwarts of the PDP are realizing after the primaries, is that Atiku Abubakar and Ifeanyi Okowa made a secret covenant to undermine the Southern regional interests to serve their own political ambitions. The SMBLF found out many other things:
That Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, from his vantage position as governor of Delta State has been leaking every discussion, agreements and strategies of the Southern and Middle Belt people to the northern PDP caucus.
That Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, who has easily betrayed the Southern and Middle Belt people can so easily as well, betray the Nigerian people and government.
Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa has throughout this campaign season been filching Delta state money to fund another Notherner, Atiku Abubakar to become president of Nigeria, betraying the agreement and covenants pronounced by the Southern people in his own Government House Asaba, with the multitude of representatives of the 140 million people of Southern and Middle Belt Nigeria present.
To achieve his ambition to be Vice-President, Okowa sold Delta State, the entire people of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt to Atiku Abubakar and is spending our money on top of that to make all of us second class citizens and subject us to perpetual domination. Even though the majority of the people of the North has accepted to rotate the presidency to the South, Okowa betrayed the entire Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt to serve his personal ambition.
International agencies are computing the figures and are insisting that Okowa’s Delta State has provided more than 80% of Atiku’s spending’s on the presidential primaries and campaigns so far.
A fall out of the hoopla arising from the PDP primaries has shown clearly that Atiku and his running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa have shown who they are and how they will manage Nigeria, with no integrity, no sense of fairness or right and wrong, no discipline of the mind, no respect for the popular will and no sense of their own self worth.
This is why the north is realizing quickly, thank goodness, that they were issued a dud cheque in choosing Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa as vice presidential candidate and are loath to invest their trust on a man suffused with treachery. If Okowa has no popularity or acceptance in his own region the South-South, and if outside the few votes he will garner from his Delta state, he can contribute nothing else from the entire south, then of course he will be of little or no use to Atiku presidential ticket.
The northern caucus of the PDP is now regretting having to face the cold reception to the choice of Ifeanyi Okowa from all over his region, a zone which has been the sustaining financier of PDP and a bulwark from the very beginning, both in funding and in vote contributions.
Okowa was a small provincial politician and never part of the initial national coalition that formed the PDP in the region and never was part of the effort to grow PDP to become a formidable political party in Nigeria. He is a mere later beneficiary of the trails blazed by Chiefs Dokubo and Horsefall, James Ibori, Peter Odili, Victor Attah, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and Godswill Akpabio.
It was alright to be the organizing hand of two conventions but he was never in consideration for national leadership, hence the paltry three votes from the Vice Presidential selection committee. Moreover, his emergence as governor of Delta State came with a paltry 41% score in the PDP party primaries in 2014, understating his lackluster popularity. That score was boosted by the agreement with the Ijaws as was enforced by Chief Government Ekpemupolo at the Cenotaph grounds of the primaries in October 2014, on the understanding that he will handover to an Ijaw man in breach of the power rotation in Delta State, a promise he has also failed to keep.
Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa did not come into Government with any new vision or superlative performance either and has not shown any uncommon achievement as Governor in seven years.
Everyone knows that it was Nyesom Wike who made all the sacrifices to rebuild PDP from the doldrums after the shellacking of the party and the defeat of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. Wike’s yeoman’s job earned him friends and many enemies but he plodded on, dropping his brother Uche Secondus on the way, for the good and growth of the party.
Okowa and Atiku are carpetbaggers. While Okowa believes he has a duty to enrich his family through government, Atiku is sworn to filching from government to keep himself, friends and family happy. No one seems to remember or care that the contract for the building of the magnificent New Secretariat Asaba was awarded to Okowa’s own blood sister. Nor does anyone bother now that Atiku’s handling of the privatization program was a bonanza for himself and his friends. Obasanjo did say afterwards that the money stolen by Atiku during that programme was enough to feed 300 million Nigerians for 400 years. And Obasanjo should know.
So, what is the assurance that Atiku or Ifeanyi Okowa won’t sell Nigeria to a foreign government if they are voted in to the presidency. The one who can so whimsically betray his community and region to attain an office can so easily betray his own country for lucre.
@basilokoh.
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