By Basil Okoh
Along the Benin–Asaba expressway, between Issele-Azagba and Okpanam, right by the expressway, is a big plastics manufacturing facility. It produces plastic waste collection buckets. These are very modern wheeled waste collection and evacuation buckets.
There is a living hostel inside the facility occupied by about half a dozen Chinese workers running the facility. One of them told me that on full production, the facility can produce two thousand of these waste buckets every working day and can employ over 600 workers in the factory, excluding the marketing and sales staff.
These wheeled waste buckets can be sold all over West Africa and the company can be as profitable as any plastic company in Lagos as it has newer and bigger machinery. But the company is lying dormant at Okpanam, New machinery unused. They produce these waste buckets only on order from the Delta State government. The facility is lying in waste now, the premises continually overgrown by weeds.
That investment is owned by Peter Nwaoboshi, former state secretary of PDP, former Commissioner in Delta state government, former state Party Chairman of PDP, former senator of Delta North senatorial district, elected two times under the PDP.
Off the same Benin–Asaba Expressway and along the Abuja road from Onicha-Ugbo, there is a Sports University of Nigeria in the next town Idumuje Ugboko, about three kilometres inwards from the Expressway. That University is the first of its type in tropical Africa and houses the dreams of one visionary, Ned Nwoko. Touring the grounds of the Sports University of Nigeria opens the eyes to the possibility of visioning for the people. In there is a fully completed Nine-hole golf course, another 18-Hole professional golf Course is still in the works, two Olympic class basketball courts, one an open air court and the other, an architectural beauty of an indoor court with a spectators sitting and standing arena, a track and field athletic course is almost completed with tartan tracks. An Indoor gymnasium and so many other training facilities. An administration building dominate a large expanse of the built area.
On the morning of my visit, students were sweating it out or playing in the temporary football pitch. I could see the dreams of one man that promises to impact on the youth of his society and impact many other nations across Africa and the world. I envisioned the many sporting stars and world beaters, technocrats and leaders that will rise from this one mans dream and I could not help but raise my fist in praise for the possibilities that will be born out of one mans vision. That man is Ned Munir Nwoko, a former member of the House of Representatives and a present senator of Delta North senatorial district.
Comparisons will always be made. But it will always be between like and like and never between the living and the dead.
I’ve known Peter Nwaoboshi since 1981 as I was then a young writer and special correspondent of a leftist Newspaper and my coverage covered the presidency and National Assembly during the 2nd Republic. The National Assembly was located besides the Tafawa Balewa Square at Onikan in Lagos. Chief Nosike Ikpo was our senator in what was then called the Bendel East senatorial district and the young Peter Nwaoboshi was his bagman or what we now call Personal Assistant. That was sometimes before Peter acquired higher education and went into politics.
Ned Nwoko’s reputation as the lawyer who brokered the deal with the Paris Club preceded my meeting with him for the first time. You see, I am one of those who are forever suspicious of the bourgeoisie. And Ned Nwoko is one of them. But it turned out that the man was more traditionally rooted and far more intellectually grounded than the media presented him.
Comparing these two men, Ned Nwoko and Peter Nwaoboshi, seeing first hand the nature of their investments leads me to dive into the deeper recesses of their character, perceptions and worldview. The one is a modern visionary, betting his investments funds on the youth, in the hope of engaging and lifting the youth of Africa through training and competition with the best in the world. To achieve his purposes, he invests to acquire the best facilities, in abiding faith in his own judgements and faith also in the youths expected good response to his choices. They will earn income from across the world in their various competitions.
The other, Peter Nwaoboshi is an investor whose factory is foreclosed to the world of competition, betting only on government prebended patronage to help it come alive and produce, employing nobody and refusing to compete in the open market or with other producers.
One breathes life and the other submits willfully to death.
These two investments illustrate the essential difference between the characters, personal perceptions and worldviews of Ned Nwoko and Peter Nwaoboshi. One investing in the raising of a bustling youth of Africa and hoping for them to compete with the other youth of the world to win acceptance and premium. The other investing in Chinese machinery and keeping them redundant, hoping on government contracts before activating them and earning income. One investing on the youth for tomorrow, the other hoping on government pork barreled contracts to survive.
Peter Nwaoboshi and his previous party PDP used politics and their control of executive power in Delta to acquire immeasurable benefits. That was the basis of his infraction with the law and the charges that led to his conviction and imprisonment by the lower courts before he was acquitted and discharged by the Supreme Court.
The PDP men now loud and garrulous were all scroungers before their entry into politics in 1999. They used their various appointments in government and elective offices to take the wealth from the people, the electors and make it their own. Now they have become overlords of the same people they have taken wealth from.
Ned Nwoko made wealth elsewhere before coming into politics. Even while in office as senator of the Republic, he keeps affirming that he does not bid for contracts and does not solicit for contracts from anyone. No one has so far contradicted him on this claim. So while the established politicians depend on government patronage to survive, Ned Nwoko does not, as he claims.
Arising from these differences, their approaches to politics are fundamentally opposed. Ned Nwoko preaches politics of service, of setting and achieving goals. He does not need politics to make a living as he claims that he is self-funding. That’s the only way he can remain a successful politician for his people. The others have to rely on chest beating and hagiography written by so many hangers on to remain at top levels of Nigerian politics.
Peter Nwaoboshi and the old PDP rearguard need to be in politics to earn a livelihood and to remain relevant in society. They need politics also to burnish their prestige and make themselves popular and talked about in society. Politics for them is for livelihood and social prestige.
Without politics Ned Nwoko will still have his relevance and his Sports University of Nigeria, a dream investment and a vision bigger than any public project in Delta state. Ned will still have his law chambers in London eking out a livelihood. Nwaoboshi is also a lawyer but is not known to be in practice.
Nwaoboshi sees conspiracies in Ned Nwoko’s entry into APC that would threaten his politics and his livelihood. Any “bigfellaman” as “Papua New Guineans” would say, is perceived as a boulder blocking his dominance in the emerging big party APC in Delta state, particularly if the “bigfelaman” is also coming from Delta North. He would rather gather the flotsam and jetsam in Delta North into his “palace” and register them all in APC. It is the practice of the big men in PDP. They gather the boys in politics to show power and loyal crowd rather than show achievements from the various offices and appointments they have held.
But Delta state, without their notice, is moving away from that affliction of electoral malfeasance. The youth of the state embraced a Peter Obi once and were ready to give their lives for his cause. Our politicians of Delta state refuse to accept the reality of the revealing experience that Peter Obi won the Delta state in the presidential election. The electoral landscape is changing and the youth are demanding commitments to causes. Delta politicians once doubted the ability of the Obedient movement to sustain their fight in the state and carry it through. Peter Obi won over 70% of the votes cast in the presidential election in Delta state in 2023, without the help of any big name politician in the state.
But the traditional politicians continue to wallow in self delusion refusing to abandon their traditional ways of politics without causes, without commitments to the people. Ned Nwoko is bringing causes and commitments back to Delta politics, setting standards by which political performance will be judged. Delta political rearguard are however working hard to deny the reality of what happened in 2023 with Peter Obi. Our politicians in Delta state are men who created dubious electoral victories for themselves through criminal inflation of voter registration figures to claim election victories and thereafter, ensconce themselves in government with the single purpose of stealing public wealth. Their claims to wealth have no anchor in any investments or records.
Now they are opposed to a man whose ways and practices, like Peter Obi, are opposed to their standard political behaviours. The man has done nothing to them other than set the goals of achievement for himself.
“I want to work for the achievement of a step down of the power station in Okpai to provide steady electricity to my constituency, the Delta North”.
“I also want to work towards the completion of the Ogwashi-Uku earth dam to provide water for 62 communities in my constituency. The water supply will also help to irrigate their farms during the dry season, thereby increasing their agricultural productivity and multiplying farm yield in my constituency”.
These are the normal commitments of a politician and what constitutes political engagement for a senator but our politicians, well schooled in chicanery and deceit and concerned only for their own self-entitlement schemes, are misinforming the people that the senator is running ahead of himself and is grandstanding and deceiving the voters. They obviously do not set goals for themselves in their politics. The governor Sheriff Oborevwori should know that his actions and the noise generated by his hack writers in denying Ned Nwoko the benefit of letting him achieve his goals will also work to deny him the votes of Delta North voters in the 2027 election. There will be no doubt that for Delta North voters, Ned Nwoko’s denials will determine the course of the governorship election in 2027.
Ned Nwoko did not invent the agitation for the creation of Anioma state but he has taken up the baton and continued the fight for the creation of Anioma state. His renewed fight has exposed the political class in Anioma, that they have no ambitions for their own people, that they have no wish for the development of Anioma other than wishing for their people to continue in their humdrum existence. This truth is emerging and is making it look like the senator is the one stirring the people to a rebellion against the traditional politicians.
Not believing at all in the need for progress of their own people, the politicians would rather no one, certainly not Ned Nwoko, raise the hopes and aspirations of the people for Anioma state. This is notwithstanding the fact that his bill on Anioma has passed through two readings in the Senate, which was never contemplated. The naysayers are infusing pessimism into the the Anioma movement to dissuade the believers in the Anioma project.
It is the story of the dogs of Pavlov all over again, not accepting that there can be light and liberation from the darkness of the cave that envelopes our existence. The prospects of progress in the Anioma project will be too painful to many as it will prove Ned Nwoko right and the naysayers wrong. The success of Ned Nwoko will be too damaging to the continued relevance of the traditional politicians. No, they certainly do not want Ned Nwoko to be the harbinger of good news, of light for his people.
Both Peter Nwaoboshi and Ned Nwoko are émigrés into APC. None of them have contested or won any elections under the platform of the APC before now. So no one among them can call himself the Lord of the manor in Delta North until a contest is fought and won. Nwaoboshi cannot therefore wish away competition by continuing to cry wolf all over the media. Ned Nwoko is not wolf but competition, and Peter Nwaoboshi must face him in the Delta North elections. He cannot appeal to the pity of Delta North voters for they cannot remember him standing with them in their travails or in their hopes and aspirations for better life.
Nwaoboshi cannot therefore take up the challenge to fight in the boxing ring and then start complaining that his opponent came with bigger boxing gloves, as he is doing now, complaining that Nwoko came with the friendship of President Bola Tinubu. The fight is not won by the size of the gloves but in the power and skills brought into the ring. The voters decide and Bola Tinubu does not vote in Delta North. The man who declares war should know that all is fair in love and in war and that it is the victor who writes the acceptable story after the war.
