₦100BN OIL AND GAS PARK: OMO-AGEGE HITS BACK AT DAFINONE—”STOP SABOTAGING URHOBO’S BIGGEST PROJECT SINCE DSC,” BY GODWIN ANAUGHE

The fight over the ₦100 billion Oil and Gas Industrial Park has raised an uncomfortable question for Delta Central: are our leaders willing to fight for development, or would they rather fight each other while the people watch? For Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, there’s no ambiguity here. Major federal investments should be protected, finished, and handed over to the people — full stop, regardless of who takes the credit. But Senator Ede Dafinone and his camp seem intent on convincing Delta Central that a project this significant is somehow suspect, for no better reason than that it wasn’t their idea.

2. That’s really what’s driving this latest attack. A ₦100 billion industrial project shouldn’t be collateral damage in a political rivalry. It shouldn’t be turned into a tug-of-war over credit. And it certainly shouldn’t be undermined by someone holding actual legislative responsibility over it, for reasons that have nothing to do with the project itself.

3. Let’s be clear about who we’re talking about here. Dafinone isn’t some outside commentator weighing in. He’s a sitting senator and Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Content. That role comes with a duty. If a project of this scale is genuinely under threat, his job is to defend Delta Central’s interests — not quietly enable the people trying to discredit it. His constituents have every right to ask which one he’s actually doing.

4. This matters because the Senate Committee on Local Content, of which Dafinone is Vice Chairman, is precisely the body with oversight responsibility over this project. This is not a peripheral committee assignment. It sits at the very centre of the decisions that determine whether this project lives or dies. Given that, the Urhobo Nation has every right to expect him to use that position to protect the project — not to sit back while it is undermined, or worse, to become part of the campaign undermining it.

5. The article that kicked all this off was dressed up as the work of an independent political analyst. What we understand, though, is that it was written by Dafinone’s own media office. If that’s true, let’s call it what it is: political messaging wearing an analyst’s coat. If Dafinone has a case to make, he should make it himself, under his own name. Thinks the project is technically flawed? Say so. Thinks it won’t be commercially viable? Show the evidence. Thinks the site is wrong? Explain why. What he shouldn’t be doing is sending a surrogate to do the arguing because he wasn’t the one who facilitated it.

6. The article throws around big claims about the ₦100 billion project without a single named engineer, NCDMB official, investor, or community leader on record calling it unviable. It leans entirely on insinuation and unnamed “industry sources” to make a real development project sound like a failure. That doesn’t hold up. If Dafinone genuinely has technical concerns, he sits on the Senate committee that oversees exactly this project — he can summon the officials, demand the assessment, and publish the findings himself. A newspaper surrogate isn’t a substitute for actually doing the job.

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7. Take the claim that the Eku-Salubi site is “landlocked” and therefore doomed. Anyone who actually knows the area knows that’s not true. The site sits along the River Ethiope, which runs through Umuaja, Ubiaruku, Abraka, Salubi, Eku, and Jesse before flowing through Sapele into the broader river and maritime network. So what, exactly, does “landlocked” mean in this context? A site doesn’t become commercially unviable just because a political rival’s article says so.

8. There’s also a rather important part of this story the article left out entirely. The project was sited during the Buhari administration through Senator Omo-Agege’s efforts, and it received full backing and approval from the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board under its then Executive Secretary, Engr. Simbi Wabote. Land was acquired. Environmental assessments were carried out. The site was cleared. None of this is political spin — it’s all on record and can be verified.

9. So the real question isn’t why Eku-Salubi was chosen. It’s why Senator Dafinone said nothing when there was an actual push to move this project out of Delta Central altogether. He was Vice Chairman of the Local Content Committee that oversaw this project at the time — he had the platform, the access, and the responsibility to speak up for Delta Central. So where was he? Where was the pushback, despite repeated demands from Senator Ovie Omo-Agege to protect the project? A senator who had every opportunity to defend this project doesn’t get to now play the role of concerned critic from the sidelines.

10. Instead, it took former Governor James Ibori and his daughter, Hon. Erhiatake Ibori-Suenu, stepping in to help stop Delta Central from losing the project entirely. And now, after all of that, Dafinone has suddenly “discovered” the project and wants everyone to believe his concern is purely technical. That’s a hard story to buy.

11. Let’s not dress this up: Dafinone cannot sit in the Senate as Vice Chairman of the Local Content Committee, quietly work with forces inside and outside the chamber to relocate this project to Delta South, and still claim to be acting in Delta Central’s interest. If that’s genuinely his political project, he should say so openly instead of running it through back channels. You cannot campaign against a Delta Central investment with one hand and claim to represent Delta Central with the other. That is not representation. That is betrayal. Period. That is treachery. Period.

12. Should this project be relocated outside the Delta Central Senatorial District, Senator Dafinone should be held responsible. He sits on the committee with oversight, he has known about every threat to this project’s location, and his office is the one now running a public campaign questioning its viability. Any outcome that sees this investment leave Delta Central will not be an accident of circumstance — it will be the direct result of a process he was positioned to stop and chose not to.

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13. If Dafinone truly believes this project is flawed or unviable, there’s a straightforward path: as Vice Chairman of the committee, he can call for an independent technical review, summon the relevant officials, and make the findings public. Instead, what we’re seeing is political noise with no evidence behind it. Why go through a media aide instead of the institutions that actually have the answers? Why work to shake public confidence in a project that could mean jobs, industrial growth, better infrastructure, and real energy development for Delta Central?

14. The timing says a lot too. We’re not aware of any NCDMB announcement declaring this project dead, cancelled, or unviable — and no public technical report has said the Eku-Salubi site can’t support it. And yet, out of nowhere, Dafinone has launched a campaign painting the project as a failure. Why now? Why would a senator work to talk down an investment in his own district instead of defending it? That’s a question Delta Central deserves an answer to.

15. Senator Omo-Agege isn’t going to apologize for bringing an industrial project of this size to Delta Central. He’s not going to apologize for securing federal investment for his people. And he’s not going to stand by while political rivalry is used to sabotage something meant to benefit an entire generation. Dafinone needs to understand that politics has its limits — and when the economic future of our people is on the line, rivalry has to take a back seat.

16. This project isn’t Omo-Agege’s personal property. It’s a ₦100 billion investment meant for Delta Central, with substantial groundwork already done. It’s expected to drive industrialisation, jobs, local manufacturing, and energy development — including 24-hour power for Eku and its environs, Orogun, and the university community in Abraka. Whatever stage it’s at right now, the priority should be simple: get it finished and delivered to the people. That chance shouldn’t become another casualty of Dafinone’s politics.

17. This is the most significant industrial project to reach Delta Central in a generation — on the same scale, historically, as the Aladja Steel Complex, contracted in 1977 and commissioned in 1982. That’s exactly why every Urhobo leader should be fighting to see it through, not working to tear it down. For Delta Central, the question was never who gets the political credit. It’s whether this delivers jobs, infrastructure, and real economic opportunity. Jobs matter. Infrastructure matters. Industrialisation matters. Our young people’s future matters.

18. If Dafinone can’t point to anything of comparable weight that he’s delivered, that’s not a reason to pull this one down. The people didn’t put him in office to watch opportunities slip away — they put him there to protect their interests. Whatever rivalry he has with Omo-Agege, it should never become a rivalry with Delta Central’s economic future.

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19. So here are the questions, Senator Dafinone, plain and simple: Do you support completing the ₦100 billion Oil and Gas Industrial Park — yes or no? Do you support keeping it in Delta Central — yes or no? Do you have technical evidence that the site is unviable? If so, produce it. Do you support moving it to Delta South — yes or no? And most of all — what did you actually do, as Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Content, to protect this project when it was under threat?

20. The Urhobo Nation deserves real answers. Not anonymous articles. Not political surrogates. Not score-settling dressed up as concern. Not an industrial investment turned into a political trophy. Answers.

21. Senator Omo-Agege remains fully committed to seeing this project through. It’s bigger than Omo-Agege. It’s bigger than Dafinone. It’s bigger than APC, PDP, NDC, or any political platform. This is about Delta Central’s economic future — and no senator, no camp, no private interest should get to sacrifice that on the altar of political ambition.

22. Those who couldn’t build it shouldn’t be allowed to destroy it.

Anaughe is a Special Adviser on Strategy and Communications to Senator Ovie Omo-Agege

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