Their eyes could be open but they cannot see. Their ears are open but they cannot hear. They act and speak irrationally.
An end time personality is usually a tortured soul.
Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, the political turncoat who is now the Delta State All Progressives Congress governorship candidate for the 2023 polls, has become fully aware that his political end time is here. This awareness is demonstrated in his frenzy, confusion, loss of understanding, acute loss of weight and other symptoms all arising from his mortal fear of losing the governorship election to the acclaimed and widely accepted Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, the longest serving Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly and governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party. Omo-Agege needs help and psychological rehabilitation. He has a history of suffering grinding political defeats until he rode into the Senate on the back of Great Ogboru and judicial ambush in 2015. It is also well known that he knelt down with hands raised over his head to beg PDP leaders so he could return to the Senate in 2019 promising that he would not think of the governorship in 2023. But blind and inordinate ambition pushed him into the race and now he is confronted by the ugly prospect of defeat.
Omo-Agege derives vitality from President Muhammadu Buhari because politically he is like a child looking for trouble thinking that his mother would be around to back him. But Omo-Agege has got it wrong because Buhari is tired and he is preparing to return to Daura. When Omo-Agege visited the Presidential Villa on Thursday, he came out again with wild claims and lies that have become his political trademarks. He told pressmen that he just met President Buhari and beat his chest that Delta State was “ripe for taking by the APC”. Which Delta State? Omo-Agege is hallucinating. He said the same thing in 2011 when against all good sense he ran against Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan in whose hands he met an electoral waterloo. Omo-Agege was so bruised and so confused that he ran around four political parties in four months: PDP, RPN, AC and ACN.
Omo-Agege knows that neither himself nor the APC can win elections in Delta State. Delta State is PDP and PDP is Delta State. Those around Omo-Agege are politically irrelevant dealers who for lack of what to do are hanging around him. They really do not believe in him. For many years this same people mocked him as a fugitive gangster who fled from America to Nigeria. They also mock him for his shallow intellectual content. But circumstances have placed them under the same suffocating room. So the truth is that Omo-Agege has no committed followers.
In his desperation, he went on repeating the same old lies of Delta State receiving N4.2 trillion and borrowing N400 billion. These are childish lies which should not be from someone who is aspiring to the high office of governor. On the other hand, let Omo-Agege tell Deltans what happened to the N100 billion meant for the polytechnic at Orogun until other Senators threatened to report him to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission before he released part of the money for the ongoing work there. He should tell Niger Deltans how he wanted to hijack the Niger Delta Development Commission so he could loot the place and use the money for election until Godswill Akpabio stopped him. He should tell Deltans about other contracts in Delta and Edo States approximating N50 billion, which he was alleged to have pocketed.
He claimed that the health sector in Delta State under Governor Okowa nosedived. This is a lie. Delta State is the first state in Nigeria to inaugurate the health insurance scheme and today it has gone beyond the 80 per cent national benchmark. Delta State has been rated the best in terms of focus on the health sector nationwide. Omo-Agege also claimed that Delta State is not paying the N30,000 minimum wage. This again is a lie. Delta State has been paying this for a long time and to add that Delta State is among the five states that pay workers’ salaries regularly in Nigeria. So why is Omo-Agege generating lies?
Omo-Agege failed woefully as chairman of the National Assembly Constitution review committee. Thinking about what lies to tell he went on uttering “er…er….er….” in response to what he made of the constitution review assignment. He blamed the states for not granting the local governments autonomy. Unknown to him, Delta State has long granted the local governments autonomy, yet the man who wants to be governor of the State does not know. How sad.
In his desperation, he called Governor Okowa a traitor who betrayed the South to emerge as a presidential running mate. This is not true. Governor Okowa is a consummate political strategist and thinker. He accepted to be running mate in the best interest of Nigeria. On the other hand, Omo-Agege is the real traitor. Was he not begging and working to be running mate to Senator Ahmed Lawal, his master and Senate President before the bubble burst? Omo-Agege is the traitor to southern Nigeria. What is his position on restructuring and federalism? What is his view on herdsmen terrorising the south? What is his view on the water resources bill? He had none because he is a slave to a section of the country and a betrayer of his people.
Omo-Agege talked about Delta State’s indebtedness and how the APC has developed the economy of Nigeria and Delta State. This is really fever induced gibberish. Under Omo-Agege’s APC Nigeria is going through her worst economic crisis since independence and statistics show that every Nigerian, out of the 203 million Nigerians, is indebted to four hundred thousand naira as a result of the debt incurred by Omo-Agege’s APC. Nigeria under Omo-Agege’s APC has also become the poverty capital of the world. So what economy is Omo-Agege referring to? If not for Governor Okowa’s managerial skills, Deltans would have been suffering from the socio-economic hell that Omo-Agege’s APC unleashed on the nation.
Omo-Agege is at his wit’s end and this is his political end time. He is seeing his defeat and he is panicking and confused. He is overwhelmed by fear. Those who should know say that he is already playing the Nicodemus calling his PDP friends at night to prepare a safe landing for him. His end game is his crushing defeat come March this year. Deltans shall boo him.
. Igherige writes from Ellu in Delta State.
