By Ovie Okpare
The apex socio-cultural umbrella of the Urhobo people worldwide, Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) has condemned in strong terms the call by a group for the resignation of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege as the Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate.
UPU, one of the oldest socio-cultural groups in the country, said it will mobilized Urhobo people to counter any form of protest to press for Omo-Agege resignation over what it described as dubious attempt to remove him as number two man in the Senate.
The body in a statement issued on Thursday from the office of the President General of UPU, Olorogun Moses Taiga described the development as a reprehensible grand scheme to further rape and deprive the country’s fifth largest Nationality of her rightful place in the National Scheme.
It said the allegation against Senator Omo-Agege who represent Delta Central Senatorial District of Delta State was not only most obnoxious and odious but repugnant and devilishly wicked.
UPU stated that it had done her checks and discovered that the allegation of the Deputy President of the Senate being convicted by a Californian court in the United States of America was false and calculated attempt by enemies of the Urhobo Nation to have their son vacate his seat as DSP.
According to the statement, UPU stressed that those calling for Senator Omo-Agege’s resignation are enemies of the “Live and Let Live” basics of democracy, which include fair hearing, due process, based on irrefutable facts.
The Statement declared that, “for avoidance of doubts, the UPU has never supported criminality or immorality in the polity. Therefore, ordinarily, if there was any iota of substance in their call for his resignation, the Urhobo Nation would have been boxed into a tight corner, but would still have stood firmly and stoutly for moral rectitude. Rather, the call, by the group, lacks the slightest whiff of believable scent.
“The UPU is well briefed that this odious matter has long been disposed of in the earliest days of Senator Omo-Agege’s entry onto the Political arena. Our Senator has been going to the United States of America, before he became a Senator, and even recently, as his family partly resides there. Even, as we speak, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege’s Californian Law License is very much active.
“On the issue of the forcible seizure of the Mace of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Omo-Agege was exonerated of any complicity by an Abuja High Court sitting in Bwari.”
The Statement called on all those who feel Omo-Agege has a case to answer to go to court, “instead of this undemocratic resort to mudslinging and nuisance to the public peace.”
It further urged the Civil Society Coalition, threatening to mobilise a noisome coterie of those they would be misinforming against our Senator, to have a rethink.
UPU said that the role and position of the Urhobo Nation in the Nigerian Project, not only in size, but even more critically in her economic wellbeing, dictates that her rights be fully recognised, and upheld, such that no frivolous group should lightly contemplate depriving her of her rightful place in such a critical chamber of Policy-making, as the Senate. It declared that the Urhobos are constitutionally and legally, as well rich enough in numbers to also, mobilise her own people to counter any form assault on her rights.
The Statement also put the entire Urhobo Nation on the alert, reminding all that this is the all-time highest position any of their nationality has ever held. It states that “it behoves all Urhobo persons the need to be vigilant and watch one of theirs being casually and callously rubbished.”
The UPU Statement also urged all Urhobo leaders in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, “to sheathe every sword, put their house in order, and end internal wrangling that embolden others to feel free to hatch such schemes to put down such a great nationality as the Urhobo Nation.”
