Guardian

WE write to correct certain wrong assertions made by Mr. Hendrix Oliomogbe in his feature titled: ‘Ogboru, Ewherido plunge Delta DPP into crisis’ (The Guardian, May10, 2013).

Let me start by quickly stating that the crisis, as you referred to it, rocking the Democratic Peoples Party, did not originate from Delta State. The crisis is a fallout of the National Executive Committee meeting of February 14, 2013, where a decision was reached for DPP to be part of the emerging All Progressives Congress.

Present at that meeting were all the people that matter in DPP: Gen. Magashi (Rtd.), then chairman; Gen. Jeremiah Useni, former chairman; Sir Olisaemeka Akamukale, then deputy national chairman and present chairman of the party; Senator Pius Ewherido, only DPP senator in Nigeria; Chief Great Ogboru, DPP governorship candidate in the 2007 and 2011 elections; Hon. Austin Ogbaburhon, only DPP member of the House of Representative; Chief Tony Ezeagu, former Chairman, Delta State DPP; Comrade Frank Kokori, Hon. Julius Okpoko of Delta State House of Assembly, among many others.

Incidentally, Ogboru and Ned Nwoko delivered the DPP NEC resolution to the APC secretariat. Subsequently, a committee of 12, including Ogboru and Ewherido, was set up and given 21 days to report back to NEC.

It was at this stage that some prominent members, for personal reasons, became lukewarm towards the merger. But Senator Ewherido and others continued with the task the party’s NEC had given to the 12-man committee.

After 43 days, rather than the 21 days within which the committee was to report back, with Gen. Magashi, the then national chairman, still incommunicado, then Deputy national chairman, Olisaemeka Akamukali, called the party NEC meeting where the report of the committee was adopted.

At that meeting, too, a resolution was passed for Akamukali to become acting national chairman, since the chairman, Magashi was nowhere to be found to perform his duties.

Thereafter, a Special Convention of DPP was called and it was held on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 in Abuja. The statutory notice was given to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and an INEC team, led by a National Commissioner, came as observers and monitors. For a convention to hold, there must be proper delegates from 22 states of the country. Delegates from 33 states attended the Convention.

Among others, the Convention’s resolutions were:

1. That the DPP be dissolved and merged with other political parties to form the APC.

2. That the Acting National Chairman, Sir Olisaemeka Akamukali, become the National Chairman for the remaining period of the party’s existence, to oversee the proper and effective entrance of the party into the APC.

A few days after the special convention, Delta State DPP met and curiously suspended Senator Ewherido and Akamukali, the new national chairman. That is what basically led to the current situation at hand.

So, Oliomogbe’s assertion that control of DPP in Delta State is at the heart of the current crisis is not correct. It is public knowledge that Ogboru brought DPP to Delta State and the party structure is firmly in his grips. Ewherido has never tried and is not interested in taking over the control of Delta state executive of DPP.

Even in the Ughelli South Local Government where Ewherido hails from, he is not in control of the party structure. DPP did not consult him before effecting the numerous changes in the party executive.

We find shocking the use of the term “interloper” to describe the senator’s presence in DPP. Ewherido did not decamp “to DPP during the 2011 when political scheming was too hot to handle in PDP. And a magnanimous DPP gave him the platform to have a shot at the Senate and he won,” as alleged by the writer.

Ewherido joined DPP in 2010 (not 2011 as Oliomogbe wrote) shortly after the Appeal Court in Benin, Edo State, annulled the Delta State 2007 governorship election.

Five minutes after the judgment, Ogboru called Ewherido to inform him of the new development and asked for his support to win the rerun, a request Ewherido obliged. To avoid the 2007 situation where Ewherido supported Ogboru even though he was still in PDP, he decided to join DPP with his supporters under the Delta Coalition for Change.

Until 2010, Ewherido was playing siddon look politics. He was one of the contestants in the 2006 PDP governorship primaries. He was dissatisfied with the conduct of the primaries and withdrew from active politics after his tenure in the Delta State House of Assembly ended in 2007. Nobody or situation chased Ewherido out of PDP. He left on his freewill. All the key characters in PDP are still alive to corroborate this.

Second, there was no magnanimity in Ewherido getting the Senate ticket on the DPP platform. When Ewherido joined DPP, his interest was mainly to help Ogboru win the governorship rerun.

After the rerun, preparations started for the 2011 polls. Along the line, Lagos-based lawyer, Moses Odirri, implored Ewherido to contest the Delta Central Senate seat on the platform of DPP. Ewherido told Odirri he was not interested for reasons I do not want to delve into here, but Odirri persisted.

After much pressure, Ewherido caved in to Odirri’s demand. Odirri thereafter discussed with Ogboru, who told Odirri that nobody else had indicated interest in the Senate seat and Ewherido would get the party’s Senate ticket unopposed.

Olorogun Otega Emerhor later corroborated Odirri, before Ewherido again asked Ogboru and he confirmed what Odirri and Emerhor said.

With no worries of primaries, Ewherido plunged himself headlong into Ogboru’s governorship campaign, following him everywhere. During this time, another aspirant’s campaign materials started surfacing all over Delta Central for the Senate seat. Ewherido drew Ogboru’s attention to it, but he told him not to worry.

Ewherido, therefore, got the shock of his life when Ogboru informed him that there would be Senate primaries in two days. Ewherido was very angry and wanted to withdraw from the race, but refrained because he did not want to be seen as being afraid of his opponent.

For the two days before the primaries, Ewherido traversed the length and breadth of Delta Central reaching out to delegates. To the glory of God, he won the primaries, but there were so many incidents on that day that made the Ewherido supporters feel that the primary was tailored to make their candidate fail.

Therefore, where is the magnanimity in an unfulfilled promise and not informing a contestant of the decision to engage him in a contest of that magnitude until only 48 hours to the contest? I leave that to the reading public.

Ewherido’s contest of the Senate seat on the platform of DPP was only incidental to his being in DPP then to help Ogboru win the governorship. If Ogboru had not invited Ewherido to join him in the rerun project, Ewherido would not have switched to DPP.

Ewherido is not a political opportunist. While he is not a pioneer member, he joined DPP when the party had no single elected member; not even a local government councilor. He participated in building the party to its current height.

Even if you deny him any credit, you cannot deny the fact that it was only after Ewherido joined DPP that the party produced a senator, a House of Representatives member, who incidentally is from Ewherido’s federal constituency and a third of the Delta State House of Assembly members before the courts and defections depleted the number.

Whatever disagreement Ewherido has with Ogboru has nothing to do with the 2015 governorship, or so we feel. It is basically on the way forward.

Having come close to winning the governorship election in Delta State twice, Ewherido feels the way forward is to team up with other political parties to have a formidable platform in Delta State for the 2015 elections. That is why he is in the forefront of the merger arrangement.

But we do not really know what the other group wants. This minute, they claim APC, which DPP has successfully joined, rejected DPP’s application; the next minute, they claim ideological differences. Then at their last meeting, they now want to join APC and have set up a new committee to do that.

At another time, they said they could not be talking about merger for 2015 when DPP is still in court over the 2011governorship election in Delta State. The question is: is it only the governorship election that is at stake in 2015? What about the elections to the state and federal legislatures? Is DPP all about Delta State only?

Ewherido is too politically sophisticated to be part of such confusion. This man has won elections three times in two different political parties since 1999. This is not an easy feat in the Nigerian political terrain.

He will not allow people (some have never contested an election, some cannot deliver their polling unit to their party in an election, some have never won an election, etc.) to lead him to political nowhere.

Our chairman Akamukali was very (to use Oliomogbe’s word) magnanimous, during the special convention to say that those who do not want APC can choose their political direction without fear of suspension. But what did Delta DPP do? They went on to suspend the national chairman, Ewherido and others a few days later. That is the genesis of the current crisis.

Finally, the photograph you used is not Ewherido’s. We shall be glad if the right photograph is used subsequently.

• Mr. Iyasere is the Special Assistant to Senator Ewherido on Media.