Delta Rerun, Registration: Facts, Logic unsettling Uduaghan

Whether INEC was made by way of carrot or just conned to blast us with the recent make-belief Delta rerun election result is still debatable? What is, however, not debatable is that the result abuses anything commonsense just as it is completely without rhyme or reason. The result stifles logic and suffocates intelligence. It is totally wishful thinking because nothing can be more incongruous with reality. And any attempt to realize wishful thinking is failed attempt from inception.

Attahiru Jega or INEC’s Delta State gubernatorial election rerun result totally made stupid the population figure of Delta State and the population distribution in the state. It is a bad trend. Nasty is the word! While the authors of this sorry state of affairs think they can continue to bloody fool us and have their skewed ways, and while their protagonists see themselves as thin-gods that can do and achieve any rubbish with ill-gotten power and monies, sane minds will continue to speak to their consciences. Today logical reasoning will help us to do just that in this matter of Delta gubernatorial rerun election results that have dumbfounded all humans but the actors who plotted and concertedly produce the show of shame.

The outcome or results of this so-called rerun election suggests that four riverine local government areas of the state that are ordinarily very sparsely populated going by the last national census figure for the area had such astronomical votes to the point of getting near half of the votes of Delta State. And that is aside the fact that this was the scene of the Warri Crises that left the whole place with slain bodies, deserted and in ruin to the point that they are still crying that government should come to their aid in building their ancestral homes so that those among them left alive can go from Warri City, Effurun, Udu, Sapele (their hosts in time of distress) to their ancestral homes. And, again, this is aside the fact that due to menacing militancy of the boys in that region the Joint Task Force (JTF) thought it had reason to sack some of the leading villages there in what some of the survivals and writers have likened to genocide.

To put it differently: Though with about the most sparsely populated local government areas in Delta state; though even to be later plagued with the Warri crises with its heavy toll, regrettably so however; though questionably bombarded by federal military personnel with its heavy toll; and though with about the most difficult terrain in the country as far as movement is concerned, these four LGA’s with less than 15% of the population, even before the said Warri Crises and military assaults, ‘produced’ almost half of the votes of the state or almost equivalent votes of the rest twenty one LGA’s in the state.

What it means is that it wouldn’t have meant anything if Ogboru had gotten 100 percent of the votes in each of the rest twenty-one council areas; after all, that can only translate to 50 percent of all the votes since Uduaghan has 50 percent of the state’s vote from some three or four council areas in his kitty. If you are still wondering why the ‘results’ from council areas such as Warri North, Warri South West and Warri South came late and to be more precise the next day, you need not wonder any longer: There was a near fifty percent of the state’s vote secured in the hands of Uduaghan waiting to checkmate whatever maximum Ogboru would garner from across the state. And with complimentary figures from James Ibori’s Oghara and Ighoyota Amori’s Mosogar angles (Ethiope West that is) what a grand way to ‘first pass the post’! For the avoidance of doubt Ibori, Uduaghan and Amori is the trio that led the dark paintings that is the sorry global wave-making news that Delta is today.

For how indeed, going by the gubernatorial rerun figures and the stage the registration exercise has set up in the state, can Koko have more voters than Sapele? It is like saying Badagry has more voters than Lagos metropolis. How can Ogheye and its environs drawing life and existence from Sapele (like Koko and its environs) have more voters than Sapele when Sapele is actually a hundred times plus more populated? How can Ogidigben not up to PTI Road, Jakpa Road, Ugborikoko Road or any of dozens of roads in Effurun be said to have about the same voting capacity with Effurun city? And how can Ode-Itsekiri and Orugbo not up to a percent of the population of any of Orhuworun, Ekete 1 and 2, Owvian, Aladja, all in Udu, be said to have competing voting power with Udu urban? What it means is that Batere or Madagho or Tisun (okay, you don’t know them but however) are more politically vibrant than Asaba or Sapele or Ughelli (which the whole world knows).

Indeed: How can Itsekiri ethnic group, about the 40th ethnic group in the country demographically speaking, be said to have a voting capacity that may well rank them the fifth or sixth ethnic group in the country today? Yet there may be no ethnic group in the country crying profusely more than Itsekiri over what it sees as discrimination and oppression because of their minority of minorities’ status! If only Uduaghan knows were he is dragging our very dear Itsekiri people to. ‘Our very dear’ for truth rather than lies must explain endearment. If only he knows the chapter of history he is creating!

To use ill-gotten power and monies to blindfold and railroad a people doesn’t pay at the end. You cannot mount saddle of lies and deception, drive pile of hogwash and never ride to perilous abode. You cannot wallow in a pigsty and expect to end up in Buckingham’s palace. We thought the lesson of Ibori, incidentally Uduaghan’s mentor and boss, should have sufficed.

Great Ogboru, evidently the sweeping winner of the rerun election may have made some dead consciences come alive when he, in his congratulatory message to Deltans, said inter alia: “By the result declared, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has told us that under same circumstances, Seven (7) Local Government Areas (LGAs) with just 30% voting capacity could produce better election results than 18 LGAs with 70% total voting strength! Even riverine areas acknowledged by our opponents as “sparsely populated” by virtue of authentic National Population Commission (NPC) statistics, produced more votes than all our major cities combined”.

To make a lie look like truth you may have to tell untruth a number of other times. You may keep on masking it with more lie. To justify the over-bloated figure Uduaghan in concert with INEC gave himself he must need reenacts horrifying record with the registration figure in the riverine. And that has been crudely done already while INEC and government slumbered. Not even when yours sincerely drew government attention to this in his piece “Psychology of the Delta Rerun Election ‘Results’” could INEC wake up to its monitoring responsibility. In the said piece I had stated inter alia:

“For the PDP the rerun election was, apart from outright rigging, a cash and carry thing. Of course, it was publicly so. It was publicly cash and carry in the hinterland, and much more so in the riverine. Persons were carried from the hinter land to the riverine to vote, and it doesn’t matter whether they are Hausa, Urhobo, Yoruba, Ibibio, Tiv or not…Before you think of a rejoinder let me leave you without iota of doubt. What is being said here is right now also seriously going on in the registration exercise in the Warri riverine. Boats are conveying hungry men of any tribe there to register in that difficult terrain that government cannot easily reach to monitor things…But a sad thing just happened. One of such boats capsized and multitude is said to have died; able youths and all! Recovered bodies are non natives now being buried among other tribes outside the riverine tribes. That i

s the big news on the street as I write. It is verifiable”. A piece though widely circulated and syndicated was not heeded by government, and so the registration in the riverine sped up in very nauseating style.

And I had hardly gone to press with the said piece when I received this text message from Sapele: “Discovery: Uduaghan is chartering buses and speed boats from Sapele, Warri and other places to Koko and other Itsekiri areas in the rivers…One person will register up to 3 or 4 times with other names. Please let it be exposed”. I did expose before it came. INEC didn’t act. A day or so later, Richard Odibo, a political chieftain in Delta also granted press interview to the same effect in the Vanguard newspaper. Of course there were many other voices. The thing was common knowledge and it was flagrantly done, and indeed scandalous! Only INEC may not have known it, and it refused to be alerted.

Well, before you read this the registration may have been over. Whenever INEC wake up from slumber I really would want to see machinery in place that should investigate the registration process in the riverine with a view to take APPROPRIATE ACTION. No action including cancellation will be too much, and in which case Uduaghan would’ve succeeded in disenfranchising his own people dearer to us than Uduaghan because, as I’ve already noted, truth rather than lies must explain endearment.