Secret Reporters No place to hide
Fejiro Oliver
Our attention have been drawn to a report by some idle medium whose names we shall not mention, since they are not worth our precious publicity with a formulated title of ‘DELTA GOV: HOW TOMPOLO’S N3B WINS PRIMARIES FOR OKOWA’ POSITION IJAW FOR DEPUTY’.
The report would have been better ignored but it is better to look for a black goat in the morning, hence the quick refutation of the report, before the general public swallows it hook, line and sinker. For the records, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa NEVER gave the said amount to delegates to influence their votes. We wonder how the herbalists turned emergency ‘reporters’ sat in their native one room and parlor to begin to cook such dirty story from the figment of their imagination.
It is more stupid to begin to say that Tompolo who have faced his business religiously gave our principal N3 billion, when he is not the CBN. If the writers of this tales by moonlights were not being mischievous, they would have done their calculations that had Tompolo given such amount of money, the delegates said to have been bribed will get nothing less than N10 million each, but their dull brains never allowed them to think towards that direction.
May we remind the authors that in 2006, Okowa won the guber primaries but he was robbed and he never used the media against the party’s preferred candidate. When the winner was declared then, we beg to ask; ‘whose dollars or naira was at work?’. There is no over flogging the fact that among all the aspirants. Okowa has been more consistent haven been in government and knows the nitty gritty of the job than any of his co-aspirants. This experience alone which he garnered right from the grass roots in his days as Secretary to Ika Local Government should have told the beer parlour reporter that even a blind delegate will vote for experience. Who wants to give her treasure to a newbie?
We really would have loved not to drag our amiable governor into this, but for the sake of posterity, we beg to do so. It is a known fact that the current government has fallen out of favor with not just Deltans but the heavy weights who determined the primaries. This alone will make just anyone even if not Okowa to defeat the governor’s candidate, since they are tired of his style of governance. If $3 million can win election, just any government, no matter how hated will influence delegates to vote for his choice. A new day baby with such amount of money will win such election with the government support, thus the slumbering writer should be properly advised to look at all sides before penning down his dreams.
In case they have shortage of memory which they obviously have, they will know that the presidency being a democrat do not chose preferred candidates, else he would have made all his Ministers who resigned from his cabinet to win, but it is on record that they lost, beginning from Nasarawa to Abia, Lagos and even in our own soil. It is the height of media rascality to demean the President and indirectly tell him that he cannot control delegates in Delta if truly they had interest.
Tompolo we cannot deny as being a friend of our principal, just as he is a friend of the President and even the governor, but to link him to such outrageous sum for a mere primaries is to invite the EFCC after him. How much will he now give for the main election? N3 trillion? Even the President by INEC standard must not spend more than N1 billion during general elections, yet hired pens want us to believe that a friendly primary gulped N3 billion in less than 24 hours; how laughable. We know where this dirty report is coming from; and it is all in a bid to whip up sentiments and make the Urhobos get Deputy Governor, but there are better ways to lobby for it than play dirty media politics and become pawn in the hands of greedy politician.
When has it become a crime for an Ijaw man to be the Deputy Governor or have they suddenly stopped being one of the state numerous tribes? We have seen this media battle before, fought it and came out victorious. We deal on facts and stories based with documents just as we have always done, and challenge the ‘reporter’ to produce same than conjure stories from his/her father’s village. This is the hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob, but they should be properly guided.
The media houses who have become pawns in the hands of failed and greedy politicians should tell their principal to bring out issue based campaign, not dirty blackmail. Now that a campaign council has been set up, we advise the sponsors of such spurious reports to focus on what they can negotiate for their tribe through the front door and not come like thieves through the fence. No one has monopoly of the media and this we proved during the primaries.
