Niger Delta Matters By Gab Ejuwa: Obuh, Macaulay ticket for 2015?

Gab Ejuwa

A cursory glance at the power equation in Delta State reveal a startlingly remarkable political puzzle; and this is the glaring inequality in the distribution of the most juicy political appointments in the littoral state. As a matter of historical fact and figure, from Western Region through Midwestern Region, Midwestern State (Later Bendel State) to Delta State, t he Delta South Senatorial District has not had a taste of the office of Governor or Deputy Governor. The Pioneer Governor of Midwestern Region, Chief Jereton Mariere, hailed from Delta Central (1963 - 1966). The Premier of Midwestern Region (1963 - 66), Chief Dennis Osadebe was from Delta North. The Military Governor of Midwestern Region (1966 - 68) Maj – Gen David Ejoor was also from Delta Central. The Deputy Governor of Bendel State (1979 - 83), Chief Demas Akpore also had the same roots (Delta Central). And so did the Deputy Governors of 1983, Chief Patrick Odiete and Chief Ray Inije. The man who doubled as the Deputy Governor of both Bendel State and the state when it changed to Delta State, Chief John Dike Edozien, hailed from Delta North (1987 - 91). The First Executive Governor (1992 - 93), Chief Felix Ibru is from Delta Central, while his Deputy Chief Simeon Ebonka is from Delta North. Both the Second Executive Governor (1999 - 2007) Chief James OnanefeIbori and His Deputy, Chief Benjamin Elue, are from Delta central and Delta North respectively. Thus the conspicuous absence of the citation of Delta South happens to be a circumstantial evidence of the much – touted  marginalization of the Isokos Itsekiri and Ijaws of the Southern enclave, made all the more so as the southern communities allege to be the economic mainstay of the largely coastal state, allegedly contributing as much as 97.3% of the Revenue Accruable to the state.

Deriving mainly from the foregoing, and perhaps naturally too, is the sentiment from the southern communities that, come 2015, there should be a district power shift from the central and North towards the long – suffering South. Although despite the fact that this marginalization seems to have been acknowledged and ventilated most unemphatically by politicians of the favoured divide, there seems to be no generalized assert to the methodology, or even the desirability of addressing the screaming anomaly in the forthcoming election year, especially considering the conflict interplayed by the great imperative bridging the yawning gap between the North with central and the South, on the one hand and the greater need to ensure credibility of candidacy, on the other throne up by these convergent and divergent forces. As if all these were not establishing enough the issue of zoning, which the PDP through the party chieftain, chief Nwaobosi seen to have installed, but which even party members seem to cordially either on and bicker over, happens to be the last straw that Breaks the proverbial camel’s back wooing more than it fair share to the fuelling speculation as to who qualifies to occupy Asaba government house next year, and who doesn’t.

And yet at the last count, as many as political titans of the state extraction, Mr. Tony Obuh, as a mere perfect gentleman, who served the state diligently is qualified to be governor, among other aspirants professor Sylvester Money Dr Festus Okubor, Chief Peter Okacha, and Ambassador Gabriel Oyibode, Hon. Victor Ochei, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa and the Amozon Dr. Ngozi Olejeme all of the PDP, seemed to have, primed their political guns to take pot shots at the prime Government House’s potential vacancy. Even, rumour  has it comrade Ovuozourie Macaulay, the articulate SSG to Dr. Uduaghan’s, is expected to fly the state’s colours in the make-or mar 2015 election, if for nothing other than to be the medical doctors man Friday of continuity and mopping up especially, like the doctor governor himself, he has been in government for long. First as a Commissioner for conflict Resolution, and, later, as SSG

It is actually this, Macaulay an Imperative in all its winsome potentiality and credibility, or even the lack of then that I would love to ponder on and explore in this write-up, especially as it germane to the howling need to redress the injustice meted out to Delta South by both central and North over the years.

In a related development, it would certainly be interesting to explore the Macaulay an disquisition of the zoning formular of his party and whether or not it ties in with the Uduagharial Dynamics of visionary post – oil conceptualization of gubernatorial imagination and its adroit execution with a view to shoring up the state’s fortune in a potentially non-oil setting.

To start with, the prospect of Comrade Macaulay emerging as Governor in 2015 is an inherently seductive and simultaneously logical one, it is pertinent to observe generally, in principle, especially given the stark fact that the other contenders are relatively inexperienced.

To start with, Macaulay has demonstrated an incidentally that he is more of a brilliant philosophical issue-based administrator and political conceptualist, rather than a sentimental zoning – card – carrying demagogue expounding ethnic chauvinism and sectional jingoist rabble rousing. How do I mean? – the reader is bound to retort. Fair enough. Had this brilliant ex-journalist been made of stuffs other than the rational and the common-sensible, he would have been the one to latch up to the marginalization and by that fact, zooming gambit, offering a gubernatorial option fore grounded on extraneous and obtrusive geographical factors rather on brilliant imagination, and conception tempered by track record of proven capability. Others in his shoes would have demonstrated their pathological and reprehensible lassitude of mind and body by flying the sentimental kite sky – high.

However, in a remarkably legendary and iconoclastic graphic remonstrance on zoning, published in the dailies, Macaulay exhibited the effervescent cognitive ability of the avantgarde philosopher king lambasting primordial mindset and ventilating the visceral new – breeding preference for clinical observation of phenomena and tactical strategizing for effective statesmanship, even inadvertently enlightening his older and more experienced party patriarchs in the process.

Furthermore, it has been argued somewhere in this piece, Delta South needs to be compensated at last for the litany of errors of omission or commission that seemed to have deliberately passed up its nationals for the exalted pasts of Governor and Deputy Governor, although this expediency does not have to sacrifice personality and merit on the altar of mere political equity and justice, which would have amounted to good cause without corresponding merit and situational relevance. However where good cause meets merit, the ground is laid for a spectacular performance matrix. Now Delta South not only has a worthy claim of entrench and deep-seated marginalization crusade to orchestrate, but also a coincidental champion whose person emotional and psychological underpinning eminently fit the bill and gubernatorial imperative. That this arrestingly fortuitous admixture be consequently exploited to the maximum happens to be the understatement of this millennium.

Finally, and certainly most instructively, the much – publicized Uduaghanal impulse and underlying credo of imaginative intellectual post-oil political engineering and configuration of statecraft and policies, it can now be evocatively argued, finds its ready objectification in the cerebral personality of Comrade Ovuozourie Macaulay who has over the years imbibed a good grasp of excellent politics and by implication political socialization that are bound to take Delta State beyond oil, in fact to its much – desired Eldorado in the Prospectively barren years to come.