Ahead Of 2027: The Omo-Agege “Structure Has Crumbled” Story Is A Figment Of Imagination
By Godwin Anaughe
LAGOS AUGUST 4TH (URHOBOTODAY)-Another sponsored hatchet job is in circulation.
It was written by Ufuoma Egbe, one of Senator Ede Dafinone’s paid e-rats in his media team.
Their desperate aim: to deceive Deltans into believing that Senator Ovie Omo-Agege’s formidable political structure in Delta Central has collapsed ahead of 2027.
It hasn’t. It won’t.
The story claims his loyalists have stayed put in the APC and thrown their weight behind Governor Oborevwori instead. It’s a neat narrative. It just doesn’t hold up once you look past the headline. And it’s not hard to see why it was written: a Dafinone campaign with nothing else to run on needed something to talk about.
Take the list itself, since the whole argument rises or falls on it. Of everyone named as evidence of this so-called collapse, only four people — Moses Ogodo, Stella Okotete, Wilson Omene, and Rt. Rev. Francis Waive — actually sat inside Omo-Agege’s re-election team back in 2019. Everyone else on that list was either in the PDP at the time or was never part of his camp in the first place. You can’t lose a structure that was never yours to begin with. Trying to paint longtime PDP people — who are now in APC — as evidence of Omo-Agege’s fall isn’t insight. It’s just trickery dressed up to look like journalism.
In fact, the list doesn’t just misrepresent who is where — it gets at least one name flatly wrong. Chief Francis Atanomeyovwi, cited in the piece as one of the loyalists who “realigned with Governor Oborevwori,” did no such thing. The truth is the exact opposite: Chief Atanomeyovwi defected to the NDC and remains a key member of Senator Omo-Agege’s team within the party. He is today one of the leading mobilizers for Senator Omo-Agege in Ethiope East. If the piece cannot even get a named individual’s actual political home right, it is fair to ask what diligence, if any, went into the rest of the list.
And that’s really the problem with how these stories get built in the first place. They’re assembled by counting commissioners, board appointees, party chieftains — as if elections in Delta Central are decided somewhere inside a government house waiting room. They aren’t. Omo-Agege’s real strength has always sat with the non-partisan voter — the ordinary people across Delta Central’s eight local government areas who don’t answer to APC or PDP and who, come election day, are the ones who actually decide things. That kind of support isn’t handed out; it isn’t bought with an appointment letter, which is exactly why it never shows up on anyone’s defection list. If anything, it’s more solid now than it was in 2023, at a moment when the APC’s standing — both nationally and within Delta State — has clearly slipped rather than grown.
Omo-Agege, too, isn’t some political newcomer whose fate hinges on a handful of local chieftains. He’s held Delta Central’s Senate seat under two different party platforms — the Labour Party and, later, the APC — and rose all the way to Deputy President of the Senate. That’s nearly a decade of name recognition and legislative record behind him. Delta politics has always been fluid, and more than a few of the names on that list have swung between camps before, usuallyq following whichever way the wind happened to be blowing. That’s not a structure crumbling — that’s Nigerian politics behaving exactly as it always has, while the heart of Omo-Agege’s actual base stays right where it’s always been.
Worth remembering,q too: Omo-Agege has won this senatorial district twice, both times from outside the ruling party of the day — first on the Labour Party platform, then again on the APC when it was still finding its footing in Delta Central. Winning a senatorial race as the opposition candidate is not a small feat anywhere in Nigeria, let alone twice. A politician with that record doesn’t suddenly forget how to build a coalition from outside the corridors of power the moment he switches platforms again. If he’s done it twice already, there’s no good reason to bet against him doing it a third time in 2027.
And on the matter of those who’ve chosen to stay in the APC — Omo-Agege holds no grudge against any of them. Every one of those men and women is exercising a democratic right that belongs to them alone, and nobody in his camp begrudges that choice. Politics in a functioning democracyq means people are free to align where they see fit, and a leader worth his salt understands that better than most. That some of them stayed doesn’t make them enemies, and it certainly doesn’t make the structure that never depended on them any weaker.
The Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) deserves better than being dismissed as some convenient landing spot, too. With Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso anchoring it nationally, the NDC carries real momentum, especially among younger, urban voters who’ve grown tired of the APC. Delta voters already showed in the 2023 presidential election that they’ll cross party lines the moment a credible alternative shows up. If anything, the NDC suits Omo-Agege rather well — it’s built on the same coalition he’s always relied on: the everyday voter, not the officeholder class.
Then there’s an inconvenient detail the original piece skips over entirely. Senator Dafinone didn’t beat Omo-Agege’s structure in 2023 — he rode it into office. That year, it was Omo-Agege’s structure that squared off against Governor Oborevwori’s in Delta Central, and it was Omo-Agege’s structure that came out on top, delivering Dafinone his Senate seat even though Omo-Agege wasn’t the one on the ballot. Now, having climbed into the Senate on the back of that same machinery, Dafinone’s camp wants Deltans to believe it’s suddenly fallen apart — just in time for the one election where Omo-Agege himself is running. If that structure was strong enough to hold its own against Oborevwori’s machine in 2023 without Omo-Agege even in the race, there’s no real reason to believe it can’t do it again in 2027 with him leading it.
When it comes to the incumbent, Dafinone’s supporters seem more interested in discussing who hasn’t jumped ship with Omo-Agege to the NDC rather than what he’s actually accomplished. That alone speaks volumes. If Dafinone had tangible results from his three years in office, you can bet that’s what the campaign would be highlighting. Instead, the focus is on how the opposition is crumbling, which is often the fallback when there’s no solid record to showcase.
In Nigerian legislative politics, being an incumbent can be a double-edged sword — it can just as easily be a burden as it is a benefit. And the usual talk of “wonderful works” is just the typical flourish you find in every op-ed that favors incumbents in the country. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t replace the need for real results that voters can verify for themselves.
What’s really telling about that piece is what it left out. No polling data. No direct quotes from former Omo-Agege allies explaining why they stayed in APC. And barely a word about what people at the grassroots actually think — just a list of appointees. In Delta Central, elections aren’t won from Government House. They’re won unit by unit, ward by ward, especially with non-partisan voters who this story completely ignored.
With about six months to 2027 and the ground still shifting, it’s way too early to call Delta Central for anyone. Feels a bit too convenient, doesn’t it? At the end of the day, elections are decided at the ballot box. Not in opinion pieces written to prop up a struggling campaign.
Godwin Anaughe is the Special Adviser on Strategy and Communications to Senator Ovie Omo-Agege
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