By Dr. Ifeanyi Michael Osuoza, State Publicity Secretary PDP, Delta State.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e read with dismay and disappointment, some recent comments credited to former Edo State Governor and now National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Mr. Adams Oshiomhole, in which he openly expressed his ultimate personal ambition to unseat His Excellency, Governor Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa of Delta State and take over the State for APC by every means possible.Oshiomhole was quoted as saying that: “One of my principal reasons for accepting to run for the National Chairmanship of our great party is because I want to pay back Gov Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State in his own coins. Earlier in 2016 he used Delta State money to fight me in order to install his party in my State, in 2019, I will be fighting, knocking and even biting him with Federal government might to ensure that PDP dies a natural death in Delta State.”
The veracity of the above ‘threat’ was confirmed by Governor Okowa himself, during his quarterly media briefing with newsmen in Asaba, who cautioned former Comrade Oshiomhole and indeed other politicians and political parties not to make comments that have the potential of heating up the polity and advised that that Nigerians should not be divided because of politics.
We join our Governor and Leader in the believe that former Comrade Oshiomole is playing politics just as we in the PDP and indeed any other political party have the right to play politics, but we also want to emphatically re-echo the advice Governor Okowa gave to Oshiomhole and other politicians which is that there must be decorum in our politics and we must be cautious in the language that we use as they should be decent.
We believe, like our governor stressed that politicians should address issues instead of personalizing their ambitions for it is only when issues are addressed that the people will have an opportunity to make their choices. We should as politicians try to be civil in our approach to politics because that is the way it ought to be and it is on this basis that we are warning former Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to watch his comments and utterances, especially as they concern Delta State and our Governor and Leader, Senator (Dr.) Ifeanyi Okowa.
Former Comrade Oshiomhole’s attacks on our Governor is not new to us in the Delta PDP, as he has not hidden his inferiority complex whenever he has had an opportunity to reference Delta State and Governor Okowa in his comments. However, we had expected that his delusional tendencies would have been greatly tempered with his ‘arrangee’ elevation to the leadership of his dysfunctional and inept All Progressives Congress. How wrong we were!
There is a popular saying that morning often reveals the nature of the day ahead and that no matter how much you wash the nose of a dog it will still be black, thus we are not particularly surprised that former Comrade Oshiomhole has quickly reverted to his crude, unstable, pugnacious, distasteful and abrasive manner in another futile effort to engage Governor Okowa in his puerile belligerence and to drag our dear Governor into his ghetto politics rhetoric.
Like we have said in our previous responses to his mundane diatribes and infantile provocations, this his recent comments are merely another manifestation of his penchant to further delude himself with the reckless and hallucinating pronouncements.
But we also recognize the fact that with his recent elevation as the Czar of a brutish, inhumane, clueless, inept and heartless party like APC, the proverbial wicked animal has now been given horns and the teeth of a dangerous political shark has now been further sharpened to fight, knock and bite with the Federal Government might as Oshiomhole himself has graphically promised.
It is indeed a sad reflection of the political immaturity and emptiness of the APC that the major pre-occupation of a man who has been elevated to highest leadership office in their party is how to deploy the money and might of the Federal Government to settle a score in a vendetta like manner that smacks of malice and dangerous intentions. This very open threat is a challenge that the Delta PDP is not going to take lightly.
We are happy that His Excellency, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has displayed his usual admirable articulation and intellectual savvy like the true statesman he is, in responding to Oshiomhole’s uncouth and banal provocation. Indeed our leader is a brand of model leadership, administrative excellence, progressive astuteness, and cosmopolitan swagger.
This superior persona, complemented with his unblemished clarity and understanding of modern political realities and governance methodologies, has ensured that our own Ekwueme continues to wax with greater relevance and burgeoning influence on the political landscape and this is apparently just too much for former Comrade Oshiomhole to comprehend and accept.
As for his empty boast of unseating PDP in Delta State in 2019, we wish to inform former Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as we have always done, that in addition to his political savvy, sophistication and leadership acumen, Governor Okowa has now embellished his exceptional credentials by perfecting the systematic skills on how to manage diverse and complex ethno-cultural situations both in politics and the economy, create jobs for the teeming youth population, pay salaries regularly to workers, even in the face of harsh financial realities created by the woeful APC Federal Government, build quality and enduring infrastructure like schools, roads, bridges spread evenly across the three senatorial zones in the State, formulate and initiate progressive developmental policies for effective and collective sectoral growth and indeed ensure prosperity for his people, through the well-articulated S.M.A.R.T Agenda in Delta State.
All these and more are the ingredients with which the PDP will campaign in 2019 and pitched against the APC which has nothing to offer and has offered nothing to Deltans, even the federal might Oshiomhole has boasted with, will fail woefully in Delta State.
Nigerians are not fools anymore and they will no longer be deceived. We are all living witnesses today to the reality that Nigeria is even worse off than it was in 2015. We are a Country that is in mourning every day as the massive deaths of Nigerians continue on a daily basis with reckless impunity. APC has failed completely as a political party and has battered Nigerians in the most terrible and unforgivable way possible.
Nigerians have never had it so bad and in the midst of all these untold hardship and unexpected suffering, we have all realized that we made a grave mistake in 2015.
While we join our National Chairman and NWC to congratulate former Comrade Oshiomhole as the new National Chairman of APC, we are even more confident now that his emergence has made it easier now for us to coast home to victory and reclaim our mandate in 2019.
We will trounce him and his federal might convincingly in Delta State and work assiduously with the rest of our party men and women to dethrone and retire the old, flailing and frail leadership drawing us backwards and the ill-thinking empire of ethno-centrists and megalomaniacs suffocating Nigeria and Nigerians in 2019.
Long Live PDP
God Bless Delta State.
