Senator Ovie Omo-Agege has said Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, governor of Delta State, dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and ran to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to avoid defeat in a direct contest with him in the 2027 governorship in the state.
Responding to Oborevwori’s claim in an earlier interview on Arise News Television that Omo-Agege is no threat in Delta politics, the Deputy President of the 9th Senate said he had nurtured APC into a formidable party that actually won the 2023 gubernatorial election in the state.
“In the 2023 elections that I led, the APC won two Senate seats in Delta State out of three. From those two, Delta Central Senatorial District where Gov. Sheriff Oborevwori and I are from, my party, led by me, won in a head-to-head contest between the governor and me.
“I defeated the governor by a margin of 15,000 votes in the only Senate seat contested in Delta Central. I won it for my party by defeating the governor’s candidate with my candidate, Dafinone. As I moved around the state reorganising for the 2027 elections, during my thank-you tour, there was a mass defection of people from the PDP to the APC because they had no faith in Gov. Sheriff Oborevwori.
“I did not concede defeat to Oborevwori because I won the 2023 governorship election. If Oborevwori was sure I was no threat, he would have stayed in the PDP to face me”, Omo-Agege said in a live television interview Wednesday on Arise News.
On the governor’s claim that Omo-Agege did not consult widely before embarking on the senatorial bid to oust Ede Dafinone, the Obarisi of Urhoboland said APC, under his leadership, beat Oborevwori’s then PDP in most of the seats in the previous electoral cycle.
“In the 2023 general elections, the APC that I led won two senate seats in Delta State, out of the three. Of these two, in Delta Central District where the governor and I both come from, my party, led by me, won it in a head-to-head contest between the governor and I. I won a total of 115,245 votes, while the governor managed to pull in 100,089 votes, with a difference of 15,000 votes. This is the vote that separates the governor and myself. We are both Urhobo people, we are both from Delta Central senatorial district. The people who know Sheriff Oborevwori and myself best made a judgement, and over 15,000 of them gave me more votes than the governor. That’s number one.
“In the Senate contest, in the only Senate seat in Delta Central that was in contest between the party led by Oborevwori and his boss [Ifeanyi] Okowa, of the PDP at the time, I won it on behalf of my party for Senator Ede Dafinone. Now, in the three House of Representatives seats in Delta Central Senatorial District, I won two. The governor won zero. He lost his own federal constituency to the Labour Party. I won two of the three federal house seats. Now, of the nine state House of Assembly seats in Delta Central, a district where he and I are from, I won five of those seats. He won only four. In addition, I won the Senate seat in Delta South, which produced Senator Joel Onowakpo. In fact, I would have taken the third Senate seat in Delta North if Okowa and others had not conspired to put my candidate, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, in prison at the time.
“Now, following this contest, I moved around the state trying to reorganise the party in preparation for the 2027 general elections, and in the course of my thank-you tour of the state, there was mass defection of people from the PDP into the APC. These are people who had no confidence in this governor, people who believed that I was cheated in the governorship elections, that I actually won the governorship elections, and the governor himself knows that that I won the governorship elections in 2023. But, of course, the Supreme Court gave their verdict, that’s the final court in the land. I had no choice but to accept it. But mark this: there never was a time when I conceded the governorship election to Sheriff Oborevwori.
“Now, having said that, the people, most people, especially in the then PDP, were not happy with the governor, and they started moving into the APC to support me ahead of the 2027 general election, and Sheriff saw what was happening. He panicked, chickened out and ran into the APC to join me. Of course, you know the policy of the APC, that governors are always given the right of first refusal. Now, if Sheriff believed that I was not a threat to him, why didn’t he stay back in PDP and take me on in 2027? I think the jury is out on that now”, Omo-Agege said.
On the point at which he started staying away from APC’s affairs in the state, Omo-Agege said: “In the 2023 general elections, I had the support of 240,000 Deltans who came out, believed in me, fought for me, and voted for me, that organic support of those 240,000 voters remain till this day. Now, when I went for the primaries, you know, despite all of the odds, because of the government apparatus that was set up against me, because of what transpired during Congresses, and what transpired during the congresses was that there was a directive from Mr. President, the leader of the APC, that there should be a 60-40 sharing arrangement, you know, between us, in the old APC and the new intakes.
“While that 60-40 formula was implemented across the board in almost every state, in Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori and his crew decided that they were not going to do that. So, yes, they came in and basically wiped out everyone, these are people who fought to give the president the vote that he had in 2023 despite the objections and the ferocious fight that was put forward by Sheriff Oborevwori, Okowa and co against President Bola Tinubu. Now these are the people who fought for the president to get close to about 100,000 votes in Delta. But Sheriff came on board with his people and wiped all of these people out during the congresses. But, I tell you what, despite the fact that the administrative structure of the party was taken by them, the people remained with me.
“Of course, in the course of the primaries, I came home, I consulted widely with these people, with the leaders and these organic supporters of mine in the party, and the decision was taken that I should go for the primaries, and guess what, we went to the field, and we won massively in every ward. The only ward we lost in that primaries was the governor’s own ward, you know. But out of the 85 wards, we won in 84 wards in the course of that primaries, and I came up with a total of about 109,000 votes to defeat Ede Dafinone with 7,000 plus votes.
“But, of course, you’re not a politician, so you may not know how these direct primaries work. Unlike the general elections where you have the protection of INEC, you know in the party primaries it is the panel set up by the party headquarters in Abuja that comes in to conduct these primaries. To the extent that we had a sitting governor who was given this panel, the panel members were unknown to us. He refused access to them and the process was manipulated”, Omo-Agege said.
