EBENEZER ADUROKIYA, Warri
Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, the former Deputy President of the 9th Senate, has declared that Delta State Governor, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori abandoned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and fled to the All Progressives Congress (APC) solely to escape a direct electoral contest with him in the 2027 governorship election.
The senator’s remarks came in response to an earlier interview by Governor Oborevwori on Arise News Television, in which the governor claimed that Omo-Agege posed no serious threat to Delta politics.
In a live television appearance on the same network on Wednesday, Omo-Agege insisted that he had built the APC into a formidable force that actually won the 2023 governorship election in the state.
“In the 2023 elections that I led, the APC won two Senate seats in Delta State out of three. From those two, Delta Central Senatorial District where Gov. Sheriff Oborevwori and I are from, my party, led by me, won in a head‑to‑head contest between the governor and me,” Omo-Agege said.
“I defeated the governor by a margin of 15,000 votes in the only Senate seat contested in Delta Central. I won it for my party by defeating the governor’s candidate with my candidate, Dafinone. As I moved around the state reorganising for the 2027 elections, during my thank‑you tour, there was a mass defection of people from the PDP to the APC because they had no faith in Gov. Sheriff Oborevwori.
“I did not concede defeat to Oborevwori because I won the 2023 governorship election. If Oborevwori was sure I was no threat, he would have stayed in the PDP to face me.”
The Obarisi of Urhoboland provided a detailed breakdown of the 2023 results to back his claim. He said that in Delta Central Senatorial District, where both he and the governor hail from, he polled 115,245 votes against Oborevwori’s 100,089 – a margin of more than 15,000 votes.
“This is the vote that separates the governor and myself. We are both Urhobo people, we are both from Delta Central senatorial district. The people who know Sheriff Oborevwori and myself best made a judgement, and over 15,000 of them gave me more votes than the governor,” he said.
Omo-Agege further argued that the APC under his leadership outperformed the then‑PDP in most of the seats contested in the district. He noted that his party won two of the three House of Representatives seats in Delta Central – while the governor won none, losing his own federal constituency to the Labour Party – and secured five out of nine state House of Assembly seats.
“In addition, I won the Senate seat in Delta South, which produced Senator Joel Onowakpo. In fact, I would have taken the third Senate seat in Delta North if Okowa and others had not conspired to put my candidate, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, in prison at the time,” Omo-Agege added.
He accused the governor of engineering a takeover of the party’s administrative structure in the state, but maintained that his grassroots support remained intact.
“Now, following this contest, I moved around the state trying to reorganise the party in preparation for the 2027 general elections, and in the course of my thank‑you tour of the state, there was mass defection of people from the PDP into the APC. These are people who had no confidence in this governor, people who believed that I was cheated in the governorship elections, that I actually won the governorship elections, and the governor himself knows that I won the governorship elections in 2023.
“But, of course, the Supreme Court gave their verdict, that’s the final court in the land. I had no choice but to accept it. But mark this: there never was a time when I conceded the governorship election to Sheriff Oborevwori.”
The former deputy senate president said the governor’s subsequent defection to the APC was an act of panic.
“Now, having said that, the people, most people, especially in the then PDP, were not happy with the governor, and they started moving into the APC to support me ahead of the 2027 general election, and Sheriff saw what was happening. He panicked, chickened out and ran into the APC to join me. Of course, you know the policy of the APC, that governors are always given the right of first refusal.
“Now, if Sheriff believed that I was not a threat to him, why didn’t he stay back in PDP and take me on in 2027? I think the jury is out on that now.”
Addressing the governor’s allegation that he failed to consult widely before his senatorial primary bid to oust Senator Ede Dafinone, Omo-Agege insisted that he won the primary overwhelmingly, taking 84 out of 85 wards.
“We went to the field, and we won massively in every ward. The only ward we lost in that primary was the governor’s own ward. But out of the 85 wards, we won in 84 wards in the course of that primary, and I came up with a total of about 109,000 votes to defeat Ede Dafinone with 7,000 plus votes.
“But, of course, you’re not a politician, so you may not know how these direct primaries work. Unlike the general elections where you have the protection of INEC, in the party primaries, it is the panel set up by the party headquarters in Abuja that comes in to conduct these primaries. To the extent that we had a sitting governor who was given this panel, the panel members were unknown to us. He refused access to them and the process was manipulated,” Omo-Agege said.
The governor’s media aides have yet to respond to OmoAgege’s claims as of the time of filing the report.
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