Delta 2023 and rotational governorship

SIR: Delta State was greeted by misgivings when it was created in 1991 by the General Ibrahim Babangida administration. The many ethnic groups which constituted the new state held one another in suspicion. The bone of contention manifested in different ways. While some grumbled that the capital of the new state was located at Asaba which they felt was at the fringes, others feared that the Urhobo with their overwhelming population would enjoy the political advantage of producing the governor of the state ad infinitum. Such was the level of distrust that the creation of the state did not elicit the kind of euphoria such a historical landmark ought to have generated. The fears were genuine as later events were to indicate. Less than a year after the creation of the state, the general elections of 1993 produced a governor of Urhobo extraction the person of Chief Felix Ovuodoroye Ibru of the Social Democratic Party ( SDP) after a fierce electoral contest against Professor Eric Agume Opia of the National Republican Convention ( NRC). Although, that dispensation was short lived, it established the point that population confers political advantage as politics is a game of numbers.

The scenario replayed itself in 1999 and this time in a more compelling manner as the governorship candidates of the two leading parties in the state at that time, Engr. Moses Kragha of the All Peoples Party ( APP) and Chief James Ibori of the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) were Urhobo. The latter went on to win and became the second democratically elected governor of Delta State from 1999 to 2007. That the democratic experiment produced another Urhobo as governor generated a lot of apprehension and anxiety across Delta State. While it was natural for the Urhobo to relish their luck, the other ethnic groups resented the idea of Urhobo perpetual political dominance.

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