Sunday GidiGlobe learnt that Ogboru was dazed when it dawned on him that victory had slipped off him. He was effervescent when the preliminary results from some local government areas put him ahead of the eventual winner and his men were already popping champagne, but, he lost compression some hours later when reality set in.
One of his supporters said, “We were already addressing him as His Excellency when we saw that he had cleared the local government areas in Delta Central Senatorial District except Ethiope West, and won in Oshimili South, Ndokwa West and Ukwuani local government areas, but what we heard later from Patani, Burutu, Bomadi, Warri North and other parts of Delta South is bizarre to us. It appears INEC has changed the result in favour of PDP.”
An apprehensive Ogboru was said to have stormed INEC office on Friday to protest the final result, which, from INEC’s computation in 22 local government areas, had given PDP victory in 12 local government areas against 10 for him.
Reports from Asaba, at press time, said there was protest at INEC’s office by irate DPP members.
Some residents of Effurun, Ekpan, Udu and other parts of the state, who were already jubilating that Ogboru had won on Thursday evening, were confused on Friday afternoon when they heard that Uduaghan was in the lead.
Worst hit were motorcyclists who had planned a wild celebration. Most of the motorcyclists wanted to take a pound of flesh from Uduaghan for banning them from doing their business in the night. But, Uduaghan in an interview with Sunday Vanguard, six days to the polls, explained that it was not his administration that banned motorcycle business in the night.
He said it was the State Security Council in the Chief James Ibori administration that took the decision, based on findings that robbers were using motorcycles to snatch money, phone sets and commit other atrocities in cities in the state.
Delta State Commissioner for Communication and Orientation, Chief Paulinus Akpeki, said those acting as if they expected Ogboru to have won the election must have read the political barometer wrongly. “It is not possible for Ogboru to win Delta State because it is a PDP state, and we are even stunned at the results that gave him victory in Delta Central Senatorial District.
In my local government area, Sapele, I am aghast as to how DPP was said to have won, but, I don’t believe in do-or-die politics; we will meet at the polls again to show that Sapele is a PDP local government area.”
However, tension is building up in parts of the state over the election. A militant group, Democratic Militia, which razed the INEC office in Ughelli North Local Government Area in the early hours of Tuesday to tell the commission that only a free, credible and fair election would be acceptable to Deltans, had threatened to carry out more bombings in the state.
One of its leaders, “Lieutenant” Tamuno Labutua, in a statement, had warned in a message to Sunday Vanguard that the burning of Ughelli North INEC office should serve as “serious warning to INEC, security agencies and all political parties that election rigging of all kinds shall no longer be tolerated in Delta State.”
Barely 24 hours after the election, the group stated, “Today, we are all living witnesses to the high level of electoral fraud that the national chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, resident electoral commissioner, Dr. George Ada and the entire INEC have perpetuated against change-hungry Deltans.
The election in Delta is a sham and a charade and we did warn when we attacked in Ughelli. The struggle has just begun and if INEC goes ahead to declare the fraud of results that have been designed to favour a particular candidate, we wish to state that there shall be no Delta State for them to govern.”
But, the National Coordinator of the Forum for Justice and Human Rights Defence, Mr. Oghenejabor Ikimi, whose group monitored the polls as an independent observer, said, “Reports reaching us from our coordinators who monitored the polls in the 25 local government areas of the state indicate that the governorship re-run election in Delta State was generally peaceful except for some few incidents of ballot snatching and late voting in parts of Udu, Sapele, Uvwie and Warri South local government areas.”
INEC Chairman, Prof. Jega, who addressed newsmen, Thursday evening, in Asaba, also acknowledged that there were lapses in the election, but, that generally it was peaceful, assuring that the lessons learnt from the conduct of the Delta re-run would be applied in the general elections in April.
However, an independent election observer, Mr. Felix Bouy, who was reportedly beaten up by political thugs while he was monitoring the election in Bomadi Local Government Area, said the elections were peaceful in wards 1 and 2, Bomadi, Kpakiama and Ogodobiri, but unit polling units 11, 3, 2, 6, 4 and 7 of ward 1 was full of “buying of votes, thuggery and intimidation.”
“My identity card and record books were seized by my attackers. In fact, I escaped by a hair’s breadth,” he stated.
A DPP youth leader in Aviara, ward 3, Isoko South, accused a PDP chieftain in the area of arming youths with arms to rig the election. He claimed that the armed youths prevented security agencies from coming to Isoko and forced people to vote for PDP.
The Accord Party, AP, gubernatorial candidate, Mr. Peter Osalor, who voted in Aviara ward in Isoko, had told Sunday Vanguard, on Thursday, that the voting exercise in the ward went well. His words, “Everything is going on super fine.”
Nevertheless, PDP chairman in Warri South-West Local Government Area, Mr. Ayiri Emami, who gave Ogboru kudos for his impressive showing in the re-run, said he was disturbed by the ethnic dimension the voting assumed.
He asserted that the voting, as was seen in the declared results, was an open display of primordial sentiment that is not good for democracy in the state. The PDP leader, who is from the riverside community of Ugborodo in Warri South-West Local Government Area was aghast as to why some people were saying that they were no people living in the coastal communities in the state, adding, that explains, perhaps, why they did not take their campaign to the people there.
Emani argued that it was wrong for anybody to say there were no people residing in the coastal communities of the state, saying that perhaps account for why he did not carry his campaign to the vast area to secure their mandate.
He said Ogboru forgot that there were perhaps more youths and workers at Escravos Gas plant than most urban areas of the state, adding that though the homes and villages of the Itsekiri people were destroyed during the Itsekiri/Ijaw war, the people still went back to their homes to continue their living with a lot of hardship.
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