By Isaac Olamikan
Shocking revelations have emerged on how Dr. Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan, the Governor of Delta State, wriggled his way back to Delta State Government house .
A man who claims to be the mastermind and who is apparently disgruntled with Governor Uduaghan spoke to reporters dispatch.
Reporters Dispatch gathered from the mastermind of the grand plot to return Uduaghan to office, Prince Kpokpogiri, that the plan was actually hatched months before the election.
Kpokpogiri, who leads the Isoko Youths Solidarity Movement (IYSM), a youth mobilization group in Delta State, revealed that the governor’s wife, Deaconess Roli Uduaghan, facilitated his contact with her
husband who expressed his desire to use the members of the youth body to perfect his rigging plans.
The embittered youth leader disclosed that he and the governor had serious deliberations in Asaba and then Warri on the strategy to use in ensuring that the election rigging was foolproof.
He disclosed that his deal with the governor was that he and his team be given skill acquisition training. He said that Dr. Uduaghan promised to give him N100 million while his ‘boys’ too will be entitled to another N100 million. Going further, Kpokpogiri revealed that the rigging plot commenced a day to the election day when he was ensconced in the governor’s country home in Okerede, Itsekiri, doing the thumb printing of the voting cards made available to him. He asserted that the governor ensured that he had a free ride while doing the rigging as he did not allow anyone to gain access to the house.
He stated that on the election day proper, his ‘boys’ acting the script the governor wrote, went round polling booths, especially areas where they perceive that the governor had strong opposition, to cause mayhem and thus disrupt the voting process.
Kpokpogiri’s annoyance is that barely had Governor Uduaghan assumed office for a second tenure when he started exhibiting tendencies that were uncommon when they were strategizing on the rigging of the election. One of such habits, Kpokpogiri said, was that the governor became too ‘busy’ to pick his calls and if he does and the issue of the need to honour his promise came up he will plead to defer the discussion until later.
He stressed that when the issue was getting too unbearable he reached out to some of the governor’s associates, aides, National Assembly members from the state and even Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stakeholders to intervene in the matter but it yielded no result. Kpokpogiri told reporters dispatch that in one of his efforts to get the issue resolved, he got in touch with Uche Okpuno, boss of ULO, a construction outfit and friend of the governor, who promised to intervene but ended up dithering.
The youth leader affirmed that his biggest regret is that while his romance with the governor lasted a lot of people in the state warned him but he ignored them.