By John Uwa
In an earlier essay, I mentioned that a whole lot of people are “oblivious of the political undercurrent and the subterranean architecture building up to 2023” election in Delta State. In this essay, I will try as much as possible to provide an illuminating spectacle of this assumption by using the concept of endgame to analyse the unfolding political planks in Delta State as we inch towards 2023. For those who do not understand the war situation in the game of chess, the endgame is the moment when players apply more strategic, mischievous and indirect skills and techniques in their game plan to win where there is no clear means of winning, draw in the face of a defeat or loose gallantly when defeat is obvious. In effect, the endgame is the moment where players make the last deft moves to keep their king alive and to win the game using quintessential terms like checkmate, stalemate and fool’s mate. In his play entitled Endgame, Samuel Beckett, through indirection, presents a frightening revelation about our tragic end as humans, even as we make deft existential moves to stay alive or relevant in the face of a frustrating sequence of hope, hopelessness and helplessness preluding inevitability and extinction.
In some sense, we can use the war situation on the chessboard and Beckett’s Endgame to evaluate the glooming and uncertain political atmosphere in Delta state preparatory to 2023. As it stands, Governor Okowa and the UPU are the major chess players; and both boast a league of strategists who play advisory roles or dictate the moves on the chessboard. I will leave my readers to determine these categories of people. On the chessboard are the governorship aspirants on the platform of PDP as the officers, and other political players as pawns. I know of about thirteen aspirants who have indicated their interest to run for the governorship of Delta State. Ten of these are from Delta Central and the remaining three are from Delta South. Again, I will let my readers create their independent list of the pawns on this chessboard; however, I am inclined to think that the eight local government chairmen from Delta Central should top the list for failing to understand the undercurrents of their party and for taking their ignorance or mischief to the public. So let’s see how the game commenced, and what officers or soldiers may be sacrificed for the greater good.
Governor Okowa, despite his public show of calmness and unassuming posture, is a ruthless player in this game. He demonstrated his ruthlessness by first dismissing members of his cabinet suspected to have political ambition, lest they ride in his wings to gain more popularity. With this action, he makes his first move on the board and sends a strong message to politicians on the other block, the UPU and the entire Urhobo nation. In response, the Urhobo nation went into consultation and stayed quiet to watch the unfolding planks. Not satisfied with the silence from across a vibrant central, the Governor made his second move by playing the Delta South card of an Ijaw governor and suggesting that the unwritten rotational agreement of his party is not sacrosanct. The response was instant; it was a loud “no” from the Urhobo nation and across. And since the governor didn’t want to ruin his own ‘birthday’ party, he would initiate some damage control by trying to reinterpret the narrative; but his body message was clear, Ijaw would have to be the Governor.
Unfortunately, not many of us see this move or agree with the theory, but I will try to explain this. If we agree with the psychoanalytical principle that we can discern the inner recesses or repressed thoughts of a man through his outward activities, then we should also agree that when Governor Okowa talked about equity and fairness to other ethnic groups or that there is no written agreement on the rotation of the governorship among the three senatorial districts in Delta State, he was unconsciously telling us that he is preparing to replace the process of his emergence with the one he signed at another ‘coven’. However, when he saw the general disquiet that followed his attempt to reconfigure the rotational arrangement, he changed his game plan. We started experiencing an upsurge in the Number of Urhobo sons picking up the ticket with just three Ijaw strategically joining the fray. If the narrative that the Governor is set to choose an Ijaw candidate for his party by first destroying Urhobo 2023 agenda is correct, then we should agree that an Urhobo may not come out victorious at the primaries. I will save the details of how this is mathematically possible due to the elementary nature of the maths.
But let us just say that if Urhobo is unable to secure its bulk votes from central, secure the Urhobo votes from the south and slog it out at the north with the Ijaw aspirants then we should be ready to kiss 2023 goodbye and wait for another eight or sixteen years as far as the PDP is concerned. And this is where Okowa makes his next move—divide the Urhobo among themselves by sponsoring or encouraging Urhobo sons to contest the primaries, use proxies like the local government chairmen and other political stooges of Urhobo extraction to do his libellous biddings, divide the Urhobo votes at the primary, and propagate a narrative that the Urhobos are their own enemies to justify the emergence of an Ijaw candidate. Sensing this, the UPU makes its move by taking advantage of the governor’s ‘unintended’ directive to project a unified candidate, endorsing a candidate thought to be the best Urhobo aspirant. And so far, none has been able to fault the capacity of the investment banker who has been Commissioner for Finance and Economic Planning, Principal Secretary to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Commissioner for Finance, Chief of Staff Government House, and principal player of organised private sectors in developed economies of the world; and even more encouraging, none has accused him of violent antecedents or corruption.
For obvious reasons, this move seems to hit the Governor by the jugular; and in a swift response, the Delta Mandate group, believed to be acting at the prompting of the SSG and the Governor by implication, came out with its endorsement of Rt Hon Sheriff Oborevwori as their preferred aspirant. The most remarkable aspect of the endorsement, in my thinking, is that the group claims to be expressing its constitutional right to decide its aspirant without undermining the supremacy of the party. This aspect of the endorsement is remarkable to me because it reinforces the right of the UPU to decide its preferred aspirant without undermining the constitutional right of the PDP to elect its candidate. I hope that discordant voices like those of eight Local Government Chairmen from Delta Central and other pawns that hurriedly went to press against their people can take note of this fact and retrace their faltering steps.
Also, I think this profound view of the Mandate group should shift the narrative away from whether the UPU has a right to make public its endorsement of Olorogun David Edevbie, to the capacity of the aspirants. Even more intriguing is the fact the chess move to endorse Oborevbori makes the next move of the UPU very easy; it narrows the aspirants to two, something the DC 23 couldn’t achieve. Therefore, the next move is for the UPU to close ranks with its affiliates like the URS and Oja R’Urhobo, and our Kings to stimulate a public debate around the credentials, capacity and antecedents of Edevbie and Oborevbori so that people can decide who they want. Once we narrow down to one aspirant we then appeal to the other aspirants and the delegates respect the will of their people. At that point, the delegate may be free to collect money since that has become a tradition at each primary, but still, move on to support the will of their people. However, I don’t see any of these happening since the grand master plan of the Governor in the endgame, and in my estimation, is to divide Urhobo to justify the emergence of an Ijaw candidate. And if he succeeds by deluding himself that the PDP will rule forever, then the UPU will have no other choice than to make its strategic move through the Agege card to replicate the Edo experience in Delta state. For now, let us hope that the powers-that-be in the PDP understand that the emergence of Omo-Agege could turn out to be the catalyst for power equilibration in Delta state, and it is equally a viable option open to Urhobo nation and the good people of Delta state yearning for quality leadership.
John Uwa (PhD)
wrote from the University of Lagos. —uwa.jmo@gmail.com
