Your Excellency, we write this open letter in our capacity as indigenes of Delta State, your ardent followers, and patriotic members of our great party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
We have resorted to using this medium to communicate and advise our listening and dynamic governor on the above-mentioned issue given that we do not have direct access to your excellency.
Your excellency, you may recall that on 11 May 2022, in the process of searching for a consensus candidate among the three aspirants of Ijaw extraction in Delta State, it was reported by some media platforms that the number of Ijaw PDP aspirants contesting for the 2023 governorship primary election have been pruned down from three to two, with Senator James Ebiowou Manage and Barr. Kingsley Otuaro as their preferred candidates, ignoring a more popular and ebullient aspirant with tremendous gravitas, Chief, Hon. Dr. Braduce Amakazi Angozi. The consensus decision was influenced by an Evaluation Committee Report led by Prof. Victor Peretomone and Pa Edwin Clark.
Your excellency, the Evaluation Committee Report has been roundly discredited and can be likened to the Prof. Ango Abdullahi infamous consensus committee under the guise of Northern Elders Forum (NEF) brokered under the supervision of the former military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, report that purportedly named the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed and the former Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, as the consensus candidates for the North in the forthcoming presidential primary of the PDP, and which generated controversies and was totally rejected.
The report of the evaluation committee awashed us and was a rude shock because it did not reflect the true political aspiration of the Delta Ijaw nation. We thought INC will limit itself to just calling for other ethnic nationalities in Delta State to support the Delta Ijaw nation to produce the governor not minding which of the aspirants emerges as the candidate and finally the governor since all of them are ijaws.
In 2015, twenty-five aspirants contested and of these, not less than ten were from the Delta North Senatorial District namely; Your excellency, Sen. Dr. I. A. Okowa, Engr. Victor Onyekachi Ochei, Anthony Chuks Obuh, Rt. Hon. Ndudi Godwin Elumelu, et al, and not less than two came from the Ika nation as your excellency.
Therefore, we fault, condemn and reject in its totality the report of the evaluation committee led by Prof. Victor Peretomole and supervised by Pa Edwin Clark, and our reasons are as follows;
1. There were no apparent reasons given for attempting to deny Chief, Hon. Dr. Braduce Amakazi Angozi his constitutional right to contest the governorship after working so hard and spending a lot of resources.
2. Why are the yardsticks upon which this very unpopular decision was based still shrouded in secrecy?
3. We believe the aspirant in question was not duly consulted and did not accept the unpopular decision
4. The unpopular decision was premeditated, out of sync with the overwhelming wishes of Delta Ijaws.
5. The report was not even signed by the President of the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Prof. Benjamin Okaba.
One of the Ijaw leaders was alleged to have said that, Chief, Hon. Dr. Braduce Amakazi Angozi is being sponsored by your excellency to scatter the Ijaws votes.
We know and wish to make all and sundry know that, such character is not in the political lexicon of your excellency, and such allegation is not true and only a figment of the imagination of the orchestrators of the story.
Chief, Hon. Dr. Braduce Amakazi Angozi, as your excellency knows him and will want to agree with us, is in the race to win and is the most qualified and experienced aspirant, as former chairman and commissioner. He is the only aspirant that has occupied an executive position where the buck stops with him.
In addition to that, he is the only one among the Ijaws and non-Ijaw aspirants that will continue with your excellency’s legacy projects and even do more to keep the flag of our great party flying.
As your former colleague and friend, we believed that you know Chief, Hon. Dr. Braduce Amakazi Angozi’s capacity to deliver the dividend of democracy to the good people of our great state, and what is more, his character and loyalty are beyond reproach.
We, therefore, appeal to your excellency, our dynamic governor, to disregard the INC evaluation committee report and give your support to a man with proven capacity and loyalty. We also in the same vein appeal to the Anioma, Ikas, Isokos, Itsekiris, Ndokwas, and Urhobo nations to support the Ijaw course this time for the greater unity of Delta State.
We can not conclude without commending our dynamic Governor for all his legacy projects spread across our great state and for being impartial and fair to all Deltans and for rightly looking at the direction of Delta South Senatorial District and the Delta Ijaws to produce the next governor.
Sign
Donald alaowie IfietuboDelta State coordinator
Barr. Ephraim Nwabuoze State Secretary
Oghenerioborue Mabel Ezekiel State spokesperson
