By Basil Okoh

LAGOS JANUARY 5TH (URHOBOTODAY)-Kenneth Gbagi just issued his own curses and judgement on the candidates from ethnic groups other than Urhobo to govern Delta State from 2023. He called their ambition to contest the governorship election under the PDP platform “ungodly and evil”. He said this before the elders and people of Ndokwa while on a voter mobilization campaign.

This is a half-witted attempt at blackmail of the non-Urhobo contestants and like all self-serving actions of politicians, it provokes similar reactions and a digging-in from the opposing groups. 

The public image of both Kenneth Gbagi and David Edevbie does not make them deserving to be selected as champions of Urhobo interests as they are presenting to the people of Delta State today. Gbagi carries with him the public image of a man of cruelty to underlings and a hard business raider while Edevbie comes as a willful brat and a financially conniving hedonist. 

There is worse to be said of these men but the point to be made is that Urhobo land must not trust their chance and turn of governorship to those who now flaunt their “Urhoboness” without evidence of a prior commitment to the cause of Urhobo greatness.

These self-serving curses laid by Gbagi on challengers from other ethnicities brings to the fore his previously undue ambition and lack of respect for the established order that he now wants other non-Urhobo to respect and obey.

Kenneth Gbagi and David Edevbie have both contested every governorship primaries since 2007 without respect for the rules of Senatorial rotation established with the election of James Ibori, an Urhobo man in 1999. Why now do they want others to give to them the chance that they refused to give to others when it was their turn to rule? One good turn should deserve another and what is good for Kenneth Gbagi and David Edevbie should have been good for Tony Obuh,  Ifeanyi Okowa and Victor Ochei.

It should not be Kenneth Gbagi crying to other ethnicities to “give us our chance”. It should be other Urhobo contestants who did not take disruptive actions to pollute the waters and overturn the established order as Gbagi and Edevbie did.

After all said, David Edevbie came second in the last PDP primaries won by the current governor Ifeanyi Okowa. What if Edevbie or Gbagi had won the primaries? Would they or the Urhobo be now asking for the justice that was intentionally and willfully betrayed by these Urhobo men?

What the people of Urhobo land, the ruling governor and the people of the state needs now is to search out that quality candidate of Urhobo origin who does not project his Urhoboness as a badge of entitlement to rule Delta State. Such men are usually hidden and without the financial means to contest elections. It will do the state a world of good to look beyond the motley throng of presently active political players and dive in to the crowd to look for that man with the “conch”.

That person with the conch must be someone with the intellectual and practical capacity to make sustaining policies and lead with a deep knowledge of the people and terrain of the state and meet it’s challenges of development. That’s the man or woman we want, not ethnic advocates or champions.

@basilokoh