The recent collapse of the entire Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) political structure in Delta State into the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has more to do with strategic positioning and score-settling than coerced or contrived cross-carpeting, LEO SOBECHI reports.
Delta is one of the five states where members of the class of 1999 governors are still active players in national politics. The others are Abia (Senator Orji Uzor Kalu); Cross River (Donald Duke); Enugu (Senator Chimaroke Nnamani); Kano (Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso); and Lagos, where the current president remains a dominant factor.
But Delta ranks close to Enugu and Lagos, where successive state governors are products of the political proclivity traceable to a member of the class of 1999 governors. Much like Lagos, the former Enugu State governor’s political grouping, Ebeano, has produced its third-generation chief executive for the state.
And, in the Big Heart state of Delta, since he left office in 2007, Mr James Onanefe Ibori, has remained the political godfather. So pervasive was Ibori’s influence that, even while he went through some travails associated with alleged fiscal discrepancies during his tenure, he was able to dictate the electoral preference of the state’s electorate from faraway London jail.
However, the wind that blew in the oil-bearing state on Monday, April 28, 2025, left signs of an approaching retirement for the man they call Ogidigbodigbo. The unthinkable happened, and sources close to the Oghara-born political playmaker said he has remained pensive ever after.
The movement of incumbent Governor Sheriff Oborevwori alongside his benefactor and immediate predecessor, Dr Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa, and all the who’s who in PDP into APC, turned out as a master-stroke that the first fourth republic governor never anticipated.
It is not only Ibori that the massive entrance of former PDP stakeholders into APC would hurt their political visibility and relevance. Former Deputy President of Senate, Ovie Augustine Omo-Agege and Senator Ned Nwoko, must be seeing the other side of midnight, as their former mockers have joined them in the ruling party to have the last laugh.
Dated grudges, unsettled scores.
Only those who could trace the intriguingly squeaky political history of Delta State in the past 26 years would understand that much was at stake in the rush by all the former PDP heavyweights to embrace the ruling APC that they once repudiated.
The political paths of Ibori and Okowa have crossed many times in not-so-friendly terms in the past. For instance, at the end of Ibori’s tenure, it was gathered that Okowa defeated his (Ibori’s) cousin, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan, in the 2006 PDP governorship primary in the state.
But, in his usual bullish manoeuvre, Ibori, who was at that time serving out his maximum constitutional two terms in office as governor, pacified Okowa.
Okowa was assured that his time would come, even as his quiet acquiescence was rewarded with the position of Director-General of the Uduaghan Governorship Campaign Organisation.
Later, in Governor Uduaghan’s first term, Ibori opposed Okowa’s senatorial ambition. But, after several repeats of the Delta North Senatorial straw poll, Okowa kept clinching the coveted ticket, such that Uduaghan was helpless in the bid to stop Okowa’s journey to Abuja as demanded by Ibori. So pained was Ibori by that development that he upbraided his cousin and cursed the money laundering case that kept him away from his native political field.
Checks by The Guardian revealed that Ibori’s opposition to Okowa’s journey to the Nigerian Senate was based on his fears that such an opening could enhance his (Okowa’s) visibility and widen his networks for national politics. True to that apprehension, Okowa went to the Senate and returned to become governor easily by pulling strings and clearing the political IOU from his delayed gubernatorial ambition in 2007.
However, as a loyal political underling, towards the end of his second term as governor, Senator Okowa was said to have approached Ibori, demanding three names of allies within their political family from which he (Okowa) could choose whom to support as a possible successor.
It was gathered that while Ibori vacillated in sending the three names, Okowa tagged the then Speaker of Delta State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Francis Orohwedor Oborevwori and directed the then Speaker to begin state-wide consultations as a prelude to his gubernatorial campaigns. But no sooner had the talks between the Speaker, Oborevwori, and the outgoing governor, Okowa, been held than Ibori decided to send three names for consideration.
According to those privy to the exchanges, the names submitted by the political godfather were David Edevbie, David Edevbie and David Edevbie, in that order.
Stunned by the implied insistence on Edevbie, Governor Okowa was said to have informed Ibori that not only had he thrown his weight behind another candidate, but also that he would never support Edevbie to succeed him.
Edevbie had, at one time, served as Chief of Staff to the State Governor in Okowa’s administration. But, Okowa recalled to Ibori the former Chief of Staff’s rebellion, which culminated in his (Edevbie’s) decision to contest the governorship against the governor.
Feeling let down by Okowa’s decision to propel a preferred candidate as successor unilaterally, Ibori was said to have tried to botch Okowa’s selection as the PDP’s presidential running mate to Atiku Abubakar. The former Delta political kingmaker, it was learnt, was among those who pushed for a class of 1999 Governor-Senator Chimaroke Nnamani- to pair up with Atiku until incumbent state governors insisted that the prospective Vice President must come from within their fold.
Fighting a charismatic Sheriff.
As the defection of the old PDP big names in Delta State roiled the national polity, not many remembered that before April 28, 2025, there was December 5, 2024. Former Governor Ibori has never hidden his aversion to being under the political headship of Okowa after the gubernatorial dribble in 2023.
As such, shortly after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn into office as President, he warmed himself into the new administration by even orchestrating a courtesy cum solidarity visit of the class 1999/2007 governors to the President at the Aso Rock Villa.
Believing that the newfound closeness to President Tinubu would pave the way for a reactivation of his political supremacy in Delta State, Ibori was believed to have stoked his daughter’s defection from PDP to APC.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Tajudeen Abass, who presided over the plenary on December 5, 2024, read Hon. Erhriatake Ibori-Suenu’s letter announcing her defection to the APC due to irreconcilable differences within the Delta State chapter of the PDP. Mrs Ibori-Suenu represents Ethiope Federal constituency of Delta State.
After instigating his daughter’s exit from PDP, it was obvious that Ibori was preparing for the 2027 general elections and spoiling for a political battle of supremacy with Okowa/Oberevwori for the control of the dynamics of Delta State’s politics. Ibori was later to follow up that move by scoring another bull’s eye through the conscription of the rambunctious Senator representing Delta North in the Senate, Ned Nwoko.
It was therefore against the backdrop of this quiet recruitment and regrouping of loyal political forces, as well as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s (EFCC) invitation of Okowa for interrogation over an alleged misappropriation of N1.3 trillion, that the immediate past Delta State governor knew that there was fire on the state’s political mountain and decided to act fast.
Although the former PDP presidential running mate declared that he was not afraid to be investigated, he told his close allies that the anti-graft action against him was politically motivated and targeted at truncating Governor Oberevwori’s second-term ambition.
Oberevwori, after mounting the saddle as governor, embarked on the completion of all ongoing projects, including those abandoned from the Ibori and Uduaghan eras, in a bid to reduce the chance of asset depreciation in the state.
Not that alone, Oberevwori, who was said to have won the heart of Okowa by his return of unspent N500 million as Speaker, has been religiously publishing the state’s audited accounts. With his rising street credibility, Ibori’s men in APC enjoyed whispering the idea that dismantling Oborevwori’s popularity and power of incumbency would be stress-free with the federal might on their side.
It was that reality of ongoing plots to use the Presidency to defeat the performing governor and bury Okowa’s political relevance, that the decision to defect to the APC became inevitable. Moreover, knowing that the convention in political parties holds that the state governor automatically translates to leader of the party in the state, as well as President Tinubu’s resolve to avoid godfathers demanding campaign funds, Governor Oberevwori agreed with his benefactor, Okowa, to move over and head members of the band of political detractors.
Already, the strategic move has become mutually beneficial not only to the state government and the presidency but also to reshaping alliances. Aviation Minister, Festus Keyamo, who was shortchanged by Omo-Agege and others in the scheme of things, did not waste time to declare his allegiance and also reaffirmed the fact that Governor Oborevwori is the leader of Delta State APC.
But, hinting at the cover of federal might, Okowa explained that the defection was for the collective interest of Delta State and will ensure that the state will get its fair share of the economic opportunities available in the national economic purse, to which it is a remarkable contributor.
On his part, by declaring the end to factions in Delta State APC, Governor Oberevwori knows that all those trying to frighten him and his administration with federal might are now subject to his political designs. Because by August, when the ruling party holds its congresses, APC in Delta State will stand as the stalwart structure of PDP, but festooned with the colour and banner of APC.
Vice President Kashim Shettima, who joined the APC national chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, to receive the defectors, described their change of platform as “a political Tsunami of an unimaginable proportion that has never happened in the history of the South-South sub-region.”
But, in the days to come, after devastating the PDP mansion in the state, it would be seen which tenants that the Tsunami will displace in the renewed APC household.
All eyes will be trained on the troika of Ibori, Nwoko and Omo-Agege as a new Sheriff takes over the APC structure. Some may want to hide or cross defect, but it is not going to be easy anyhow, because interesting times beckon for Delta politics.
