2019: Fresh trouble for Omo-Agege

• Delta APC leader, Emerhor, vows to unseat him

Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, representing Delta Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, has been drawn into fresh crisis in the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Delta State. The State Party leader, Olorogun Otega Emerhor, has threatened to unseat the embattled senator, questioning Omo-Agege’s integrity and sincere loyalty to President Muhammadu Buhari.

Omo-Agege stoked the inferno chasing him in his actions to blackmail Delta APC leaders, including, Otega Emerhor, in Abuja, portraying them as enemies of President Buhari, while pretending to be the President’s best friend from Delta Sate.

Otega Emerhor, in a statement by his media aide, Aghogho Orotomah, titled: “Senator Omo-Agege, when did you stop loving Jonathan and start loving Buhari… Let’s Meet At Direct Primaries!” remarked that Omo-Agege’s new love for Buhari is deceptive after he had supported former President Goodluck Jonathan against Buhari in 2015 elections.

The statement released in Abuja on Tuesday reads:

“Our attention has been drawn to Senator Omo-Agege’s naive and ill-advised diatribe against Delta Central Elders and Leaders of APC in Delta State who not only came to persuade but bought and presented the APC senate nomination forms to Olorogun O’tega Emerhor, OON, last weekend. The Elders and Leaders had also pleaded with Emerhor to accept the forms and run to replace Senator Omo-Agege as Delta Central Senator come 2019.

“In his childish, churlish, intemperate and vulgar tirade, the outgoing Senator launched a dishonourable personal attack on the Elders and chiefs of Urhobo describing them as malleable rent seekers, mere contractors and generally dishonorable men.

“He reserved even worse epithets for Olorogun Emerhor. But the most laughable was when he described him as anti-Buhari.

“It is obvious that Omo-Agege hopes that, by playing this con game, he can turn the tables against his far more superior and politically savvy opponent. He probably also hopes against hope, that by brandishing his recently adopted pro Buhari toga, he can dampen Olorogun Otega’s enthusiasm to wrest the senate seat from him.

“But if this were a strategy, then, it is silly through and through. Everyone in Delta knows Omo-Agege to be an acolyte of former President Jonathan. Even though he campaigned on the platform of Labour Party, it is a well-known fact that Labour was in alliance with the PDP against the APC and together they fought a brutal battle against Olorogun Otega and pro-Buhari supporters in Delta State.

The statement further reads: “We recall the last election like it was yesterday. We the pro-Buhari supporters, were brutalized by Omo-Agege and PDP. We were bruised, but we were unbowed. We bled, but we soldiered on regardless.

“Omo-Agege and PDP gave us a name in Delta: Boko Haram Supporters Party. Nigerians may not know it. But in the inflamed passions of 2015, where a Niger Deltan, Jonathan, was on the ballot against Buhari, a Fulani , this was the equivalent of a death sentence.

“But as soon as Buhari won the elections, everything changed. Today, an Omo- Agege has the fawning temerity to describe Olorogun Otega and the growing sea of Mr. President’s supporters in Delta as anti Buhari, simply because he thinks this is how to hoodwink Abuja, and get an automatic ticket back to the Red Chamber.

“But it would not work because President Buhari and his team are far more sophisticated and politically discerning than Omo Agege and his ilk.

“While it is correct that Omo Agege has been linked to other courageous senators who are standing up to those in the way of the programmes of our President in the National Assembly, this doesn’t crown him as the only supporter of Mr. President in Delta State.

“When Omo Agege vaingloriously seeks to take credit for stopping the amendment to the sequence of elections, and boasts about being the one that that ensured our President’s election comes first, is he not only being clever by half? Was it he that gave our President the presence of mind not to sign the electoral bill, a bill fraught with errors and sheer legislative mischief?

“Is he unaware that even the courts struck down the proposed sequence of elections? So on what grounds does Senator Omo-Agege arrogate saving President Buhari’s presidency to himself and his so-called courageous and fearless grandstanding.”