We shall say it the umpteenth time that the failure of Great Ogboru to get it right in the end despites all the mandates he got from the people to govern Delta State has indescribably disenchanted the people; a sorry state they have wished and yearned they be unburdened or disencumbered of. And they have moved from desire to search for a better person, one with better antecedents, better horizons, more connected and undaunted and one to take any mandate to its logical end. When Otive Igbuzor stepped out recently into the Delta 2015 race to Asaba, the people knew there was no need for further search. The people have not drifted from Ogboru all this while only because a better man has not signified intention to come on board, and the inevitable was to painfully wait for Ogboru to get it right in the end.
But his continual failure to get it right in the end and the continuous unrestraint looting of our treasury by the Ibori-Uduaghan clan, the worst profligates Nigerians have known in our clime, and the telling impact of this on the people, all as a result of this failure of Ogboru to get it right in the end became the tug that yanked Otive Igbuzor off his long ‘sit don look’ posture and booted him into the struggle to rescue Delta from both failed governance and failed opposition. It was a pull so overpowering that it gave Otive no option even though Ogboru may be a close friend. The people after fifteen years of hopelessness must matter most.
I mean then, that Otive ordinarily would not have come into the race if Ogboru had not failed, and if he (Otive) still considers Ogboru better for 2015. That is simple common sense. He came in because he sees that Ogboru has failed. And, indeed, Ogboru has failed. He came in because he thinks he (Otive) is better. And, again, he is better. The place of this writer is to show that Otive is better than Ogboru on every count that matters in getting it right in the end and in governance, much better in most counts, and far much better in some. And I would not gulp the ‘lecture’ from Ogboru’s office urging or advising me not to go into such comparison because since contest is contest the people must know the better candidate, which is made easy by comparing notes.
After all, Otive and Ogboru are not running joint ticket. If Ogboru is still angling or lurking to get into the 2015 race (which yours sincerely is today advising him against having been allowed by the opposition unopposed severally now) then we must now necessarily compare him with the bright star that has NOW made up his mind to contest after a long hopeful wait turned hopeless, because of incurable failure of Ogboru not getting it right in the end. I understand their plight and fright. I conjecture their fear is driven by two gargantuan facts. The first is the fear of the person doing the comparison; a person they recently dubbed ‘foolish’ for trying to sell a better, much better and far much better candidate depending on the area of focus; and never mind that this is also a person they have hitherto held high to Everest for showcasing Ogboru as the best candidate these near fourteen years! All those years this writer was not ‘foolish’! Now that an overwhelmingly better candidate has stepped out as helmsman of the rescue team in Delta I should be mute. Secondly, of course, their fear is driven by the caliber of the person being compared with Ogboru, a man unquestionably better and one that rubbishes anything Ogboru can bring to the table; an intellectual juggernaut, startling performer, towering friend of Labour and the Press; an international figure of repute, and the enthralling list runs ad infinitum.
Yes, I would still have been writing for Ogboru if a better man did not rear up for 2015. But now, one has! Good enough Delta and Deltans need the best today, and I should be allowed to present the current best as I did with the best then. I mean that when I wrote profusely for Ogboru, it was because he was the best that stepped out in the political landscape in Delta. And because of that many in the opposition then who reasoned they have the ingress to run for Asaba dropped their ambitions because of the way we represented our lenses on Ogboru to them. Today, Otive is the quintessence and embodiment of all is required to turn things around! He is both the archetype of the helmsman we need now to lead Delta opposition into 2015 and to head the government of Delta State in 2015. Since he signaled his intention in this wise, it has been something else. The difference is clear, and that is just tapping into the proprietary right of Seven-up anyway. In another piece, we hope to bring to the glare of all, Otive’s ‘seven ups’ that thoroughly rubbish any closest rival in the 2015 race to Asaba. Then the difference will even be much clearer.
For now, may we say that the disenchantment of the people about Ogboru is not mono-causal. We have said it well enough previously that Ogboru’s repeated failure in getting it right in the end each time the people give him the mandate has had incurably dampening effect on them. The main reason you can put forward for the drift from Ogboru to Otive now is that a better man (better on all counts) has emerged to ‘secure power for the people’s mandate’. Mandate actually gives or returns power to the people! This has not happened in decades now, because Ogboru has not for once gotten it right in the end. Mandate offers a mandatory onus, a burden to turn it to power which can be done when you prepare to run with it conclusively. Wasted mandates upon mandates are not what the people want. When they give mandate, it is expected that the man it is given to should have beforehand the wherewithal or necessary means to run with it to its logical end and the will to employ such wherewithal to run with the mandate conclusively. It is mandatory for the one with the mandate to prepare to run and safely run with it, and this is how power return to the people who gave that power by way of that mandate in the first place. Mandate wasted throws up rogues, hirelings, profligates, and political monsters as is the case in Delta since 1999. When a clique knows that they can always be in government whether the people like it or not, it does what it likes. And when an opponent is going into election unresolved to tell the clique (by way of actionable strategic checkmating network) that such a clique cannot do just what it likes and consequently fail to run with the people’s mandate, then he better not come out in the first place. And when this is repeatedly so, as it is with Ogboru and the people of Delta, it is even more worrisome and shattering! Ogboru may not know how he has battered and ruined many a hearts this one decade plus. We need total actionable strategic checkmating network when dealing with the Ibori-Uduaghan clan. A system that is all eyes before, during and immediately after election. That is mandate consummated! It is accountability and results. It is power to the people. And nothing is more rewarding. The people give the mandate, we run with it conclusively, and it thereafter dictates governance to the satisfaction of the people. Mandate is the people’s power. When you rubbish that you bump off their power, and subject them to all nastiness. The drift today is because the people don’t want to run through another nasty road another four years.
The drift from Ogboru to Otive is also as result of how Ogboru murdered the spirit of the opposition. He mismanaged what we gave him when all the opposition including the opposition within the PDP then led by Fred Brume collapsed their structures under Ogboru immediately he came from exile and the signals became clear that he would eye Asaba. He won the election first time out. But messed it up! At the point I knew it has been messed up, I went to him at his Lagos office and told him to get ready to go to the electorate again because the next election was already in the co
rner and that even those in governments across the nation were already gearing up for it. He declined to, saying he has spent so much in the last election and preferred seeing the final outcome of it. He sounded as if except he was declared winner that would be the end of his dream. He later went back to the electorate anyway. When Ogboru’s political structure grew great to the point that he could have won any election any day and to the point that the grinder at the mill under him could have also won parliamentary election any day he allowed the thieves in PDP to come to the opposition. PDP’s stalwart thieves and sturdy rogues infiltrated into the struggle and their giving out of handouts from the billions of Naira that they stole from our treasury over the years to Ogboru’s DPP ‘course’ so to pave way for them to get that party’s tickets, and which tickets they got with many of them winning their elections pictured Ogboru and his party as not being different from PDP at the end of the day. I wrote briefly about this at the time this madness reached the peak. It may not have reached them with approval. At the peak of the madness, if Amori and even Ibori for any grouse with Uduaghan wanted Uduaghan out of office and were to cross to DPP to achieve that, they would have had ready embrace in Ogboru. If I must spare mentioning names some of the characters that moved from the PDP this period to pick DPP tickets are every inch Ibori. I reiterate that with what happened then Ogboru would have allowed Amori and Ibori into the ‘struggle’if Amori or Ibori had decided to fight Uduaghan. He didn’t embrace and use them because they didn’t come over. If they had done so he would have treated them as he treated their comrades and co-travelers in the despoliation of our State treasury and in the turning of Delta to a very sorry Augean stable, even in the face of unmatched State resources at our disposal.
The people see and know better than we think. They know when values are fallen down over the precipice. They know when the struggle shifts from people’s struggle to mammon pursuit and to family struggle. And who said Ogboru’s own relations (of the same name) who every inch were PDP before they came with surreptitious motives to ‘join’ the struggle to ‘rescue’ Delta and pitched their tent with DPP and almost instantly became topnotch of DPP before doing a not surprising return to PDP just before the last Delta Senatorial District Bye-elections could well not be moles! To me, they ‘sold’ Ogboru; and Ogboru sold the opposition. The people knew that except we go back to the drawing board, the struggle, under Ogboru, is in a steep fall to its nadir. Ogboru allowed any PDP chieftain who has driven out our monies from our treasuries in droves but now feel ‘aggrieved’ not only to come to DPP but to showcase our stolen monies in DPP, get DPP party tickets at the expense of those who have been in the struggle, and that genuinely.
Getting these people to fight with us was a clear case of rightabout, a very disturbing thing indeed and it compromised the struggle unspeakably. It was too tainting and damning! And the people wanted another man, another leader and a renewed and reinvigorated opposition good enough to get the mandate and consummately so, and get started with real governance.
Well, those crooks “came, saw and ‘conquered’”; and are today back to the PDP filth and grime, to perpetuate the Augean stable that Delta has been made. The sordidness and squalidness of the evil is growing from worst to the indescribable. It was in its worst state with Ibori for he did not care enough to cover up many things, now it may not be described in the superlatives. Beyond the deviousness and craftiness employed today in reaching their same inglorious goal, what is happening now is too massive to be captured with the sharpest of pens. Yet, Ogboru could hobnob with these people; work up his system to allow them to go home with his party’s tickets. Too un-thoughtful, too directionless and too compromising of the ideals, vision and goal of the struggle!
The last Delta senatorial contest (in Ogboru’s senatorial district) was the dead finish blow or the final and unbearable misfortune. Yes, that election like those before it these near sixteen years was superlatively rigged, but no serious mind has ever said that Ogboru’s man in this senatorial election won the election. Julius Ogboru and friends ‘sold’ Great Ogboru and the latter sold the struggle. He did! He was impervious to the feelings of the last and vast echelon of the struggle viz. the grassroots. No worst way to dampening the spirit of the struggle. As Shakespeare would say, this was “the most unkindest cut of all.” And the people were pained. There was no way they could say it when, hitherto, Ogboru still remained the brightest of all the candidates in the state, for in a host of the blind, lame, inept and unschooled a one-eyed man even though partially or fully lame, inept and or unschooled is champion, leader and hero any day. But let one great in sight and vision, with great steps and strides, great skill and competence and greatly schooled come around, even though may not answer ‘great’ as first name, the table turns greatly, and for great good. And when that man came in Otive, the drift can only be natural.
Where in political history have you heard a political contestant having his own kith and kin (kinsfolk) not only vowing in the realm of the spirits or spheres of sorcery that they would not allow their son to win election but took it to a point where the Press even made serious issue of it? Not even in Haiti and Benin Republic with all their voodoo have we heard this. And you think the people are not disenchanted? They are terribly! And then too, can you readily remember when a lawyer employed to fight a so serious political case backing out of such a case at an apex court. They said the lawyer was bought over. How would you even pick a lawyer who could be bought over in a most serious case involving mandate of millions and you think you’re thoughtful enough to make decisions for a whole state?
Before, during or immediately after that very sorry misadventure I called one of Ogboru’s aides why we should think again. He just wrote me this year that when I said that then he wondered and wondered; that is, wondered that I could say such a thing. What is the position today? You may be allowed to continuously shoot yourself at the foot if you want to, but when the feet of multitudes are involved you should be extremely careful of your thoughts and actions. It has been terrible pains on the part of the people and they want a complete overhaul and great oiling of the opposition machine. And they have seen the man to do that: the man Otive Igbuzor.
Actually, for awhile now there has been nothing Ogboru did that has caught our fancy because the people who have been so hopeful have become so disenchanted and yet there is no plan or plan of action on board to end this disenchantment, no plan to get it right in the end, after twelve solid years. We only held on to him because of the dearth of emergence of better candidates, actually unwillingness of better candidates. And so, we have been keeping our hands crossed, and as we did that Providence pumped life and glow into us when the story of apparently the best man across the length and breadth of the state that can ever join the race at this point in time to help us out of our serious predicament came to us. Otive Igbuzor’s entry into the race is about Providence. It is the hand of God.
And do not forget that apart from antecedents, horizons (including interest, knowledge and experience) connections, values-orientation and popularity (local, national and international) which deems Ogboru’s here, age is still on the side of Igbuzor being now 50; middle age in sociologi
cal terms, bridge age between the old and young. From any angle you see it he just fits in properly. When Ogboru came into the race and we readily gave him our hands he was about 43. By 2015 he would be about 58, already eyeing 60.
It was Charles de Gaulle who allegedly in a response to Jacques Soustelle who complained that he was being attacked by his own friends said that “Change your friends”. There is a time to change friends. People like us who have been in the struggle before Ibori second usurped mandate have, like Ogboru, added about 14 years to our age. And now that there is the great need to heighten the struggle, take it away from the family struggle it deteriorated to at a time and that partly strangulated it, we need to give it acceleration and extend it beyond getting just mandates. And the challenge is that we need a thorough and full bred to get that done. We need one who fits in squarely and who can make up for all Ogboru’s failures and weaknesses. There was nothing more biting and urgent. And with Otive Igbuzor today, the human drift from a strayed struggle to this bastion of re-invigorated and renewed struggle that has upped hope once more and greatly promises the actualization of the rescue of Delta and Deltans from the crutches of monstrosity in governance is self-explanatory.
