Former Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege, has responded to some of the allegations levelled against him by the Delta State Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori, who claimed that the former federal lawmaker failed to consult party leaders in the state, News.ng reports.
Omo-Agege, in an interview on Arise Television on Wednesday morning, stated that the state governor disregarded a directive given by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to implement a 60-40 sharing arrangement in order to accommodate new members of the party who defected from other parties to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Recall that last December, Governor Oborevwori, who contested on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), defected to the APC alongside key political figures in the state, including immediate past Governor Ifeanyi Okowa and former Governor James Ibori, among others.
Meanwhile, Omo-Agege argued that following the governor’s decision to disregard the President’s directive, a handful of members who voted for the President in 2023 were wiped out during the state congress.
He 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 that 240,000 voters remains to 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 the congresses, whether there was a directive from Mr. President, the leader of the APC, that there should be a 60-40 sharing arrangement, you know, between me, the old, at that time, the old APC, and the new intakes.
“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, Okowo, and Co. against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Now, these are the people who fought for the president to get close to 100,000 votes in Delta, but Sheriff came on board with these people and wiped all of these people out during the congresses.”
However, despite the apparatus Omo-Agege claimed was set up against him, those who voted for him in the 2023 general elections are still with him.
According to him, he consulted his supporters and leaders, and they permitted him to contest in the APC primary, which he claimed he won overwhelmingly.
Following the conclusion of the exercise, Omo-Agege claimed that his votes were not recorded by the panel headed by the state governor.
“But tell you what, despite the fact that the administrative structure of the party was taken by them, the people remained with me. The people never left me. That organic support remained.
“And 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. But out of the 85 wards, we won 84 wards in the course of the primaries. And I came up with a total of about 109,000 votes to add to that 7,000-plus votes.
“But of course, you’re not a politician. You may not know how these direct primaries work. Unlike the general elections, where you have the protections of INEC, in the party primaries, it is the panel that is 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, which panel he refused to make available to conduct the free and fair primaries. So my votes were not recorded. We actually won the primaries,” he added.
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