By Godslove Preye
(Opinion)
The M.O.R.E. Reality Group (MRG), devoted to supporting the well thought out and well intentioned M.O.R.E Agenda, acronym for: Meaningful Development, Opportunities for All, Realistic Reforms and Enhanced Peace and Security, of the Governor of Delta State, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori for the people, has watched with keen interest the series of buffeting releases in recent times by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Delta, through some of its delusional surrogates like Ogaga Ovasa, aimed at undermining the efforts and good work that the Governor is doing.
MRG is sickened by the disingenuous disposition of these cretins to obfuscate issues and try to pander to emotions, through dishing out propaganda in the name of Press Releases just to confuse and possibly get unwary Deltans and the general public, who are daily assaulted by the very bad economic policies of the APC-led Federal Government to swallow its deceptive narrative.
Of course, MRG is not in any way amazed by the persistent eccentricity of the authors of the puerile taunts and comic roles; these have always been their stock in trade as they have positioned themselves as sworn enemies of Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori and his administration.
Rather than bury their heads in shame and mull over the hunger, pain and all the suffering and trauma that the maladministration that the APC Federal Government has plunged Nigerians into, these extremists and fundamentalists have continued to issue press releases, numbering about four in one week, thus exposing how detached they are from the pathetic condition that the deliberately suffocating policy of the present Federal Government has put Nigerians and businesses into at this time.
Among the many claims of the clueless propagandists thrown against the administration of the M.O.R.E Apostle, Governor Sheriff Oborevwori are words like: “misgovernance”, “economic mismanagement”, “financial recklessness,” which they have quite callously dumped on the door step of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to “crippling debts that successive PDP administrations have driven Delta State into,” which they draped the PDP with, up until the Governor Sheriff Oborevwori just over one year tenure.
As observers of these diatribes, MRG seeks first of all, to set the records straight about the worthless brouhaha, which has been made over the debt servicing/repayment initiative of the Governor Sheriff Oborevwori’s administration.
First, renowned economists all over the world, will confirm that debt repayment or servicing is one of the most strategic policies to reduce Interest Costs by freeing up funds that can be allocated to other areas such as infrastructure, healthcare, education, or social welfare programs, just as the administration of Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori is doing presently.
Second, Debt repayment also improves the credibility of any administration in the global financial community as a serious minded and progressive administration, which will enjoy the respect and attention of financial institutions, since its only a well run economy that can embark on debt servicing and still maintain its developmental vision and focus for the welfare and well being of its citizens, as well as encourage and attract investors to the State.
Again, debt repayment/servicing not only stabilizes the economy by reducing the risk of a debt crisis that could negatively impact the implementation of the plans of the administration, prioritizing debt repayment, as against the penchant of borrowing, demonstrates fiscal responsibility and discipline and it is on record that the Governor Sheriff Oborevwori’s administration has not borrowed money since it assumed office on May 29, 2023.
Finally, it is also important to educate the illiterate APC spokesperson and other armchair critics, that debt repayment has created a systemic fiscal leverage, which the administration has been utilizing for investments in public infrastructure like the completion of ongoing projects, the robust infrastructural development going on across the three Senatorial zones in the state and the amazing construction work by the renowned Julius Berger firm of the three flyovers in the Warri axis, already progressing with impressive speed.
It has also given the Oborevwori administration the latitude to embark on and support critical and selected social programmes like the M.O.R.E Grants Scheme, the D-Cares and other empowerment programmes and emergency events and schemes which have already impacted positively on hundreds of thousands of Deltans and will continue to position Delta State in the top tier of the most favoured and attractive states in the country.
All these point to the incontrovertible fact that the Governor Sheriff Oborevwori administration, in maintaining the debt repayment/servicing obligation, has exhibited commendable and prudent financial management of its funds, by not only ensuring fiscal fluidity and stability, but most importantly, doing so by sustaining an impressive balance with other economic considerations, such as promoting growth, maintaining public services, and addressing social needs.
It is based on the above economic paradigms and truism that MRG sees the misapplied use of the word ‘misgovernance’ as laughable, especially coming at this disquieting times when there’s a groundswell of national outrage from Nigerian youths and adults; men and women, with a call to #EndBadGovernance, unleashed by the President Bola Tinubu-led APC Federal Government, on Nigerians.
The protest exposed the APC-led Federal Government’s underbelly as a government that lacks initiative on how to resolve the challenges bedeviling the nation; challenges that were deliberately imposed on Nigerians by one statement, uttered in one bellicose moment of pseudo-rational, unscripted, egomaniacal narcissism; challenges that have debased the person of every Nigerian and made life difficult for the people.
Ogaga Ovasa did not see anything abnormal with the APC being in power for over nine locust years, which has clandestinely transformed Nigeria into a country overrun by waves of insecurity that have left farmers languishing in IDP camps and driven away from their ancestral homes.
It means nothing to the yeye propagandist that its Federal Government that announced the removal of fuel subsidy, is bereft of the know-how about what to do to cushion the effect of the subsidy removal; the same person who sponsored and led the #OccupyNigeria protests in its vainglorious effort to cripple the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, over the same fuel subsidy removal, which they have come full circle to implement.
Today, the chickens have come home to roost Nigerians are miffed that the Federal Government had to unconscionably float the Naira in an economy that is neither productive no innovative but has continued to stumble from one experimentally damaging policy to another, thus leaving millions of our people in pain and hunger.
Indeed, Nigerians know that the APC, after its disastrous nine years of “Saint” Buhari is no longer a Party to be taken seriously not only because it lacks the moral impetus to accuse the Delta State PDP Government of misgovernance, but most unfortunately for the sheer shameless impunity and misleading audacity with which Ogaga Ovasa attempted to bypass the retrogressive years of the Buhari administration and vilify the Goodluck Jonathan administration, for Nigeria’s woes.
For Nigerians, APC, a party whose Federal Government is now dispensing wickedness and maladministration is the one that its clueless propagandists are engaged in tell tales of “misgovernance” against a well focused PDP administration in Delta that has brought measured peace and tranquility to the State.
The Delta PDP Publicity Secretary, Engr. Dan Ossai in his very cerebral, articulate and well researched response to an earlier verbiage by this same APC extremist, detailed quite robustly, how the Buhari administration ruined Nigeria, as presented by its own officials first Zainab Ahmed, the former Minister of Finance under Buhari, who openly admitted in 2021 that, revenues were low and so were federal allocations to the States and Local Governments.
She said: “The crash of the crude oil prices really hit us very hard in terms of revenue. We have very low revenues, we have very high expenditures. What we have done so far is just to provide some stability to make sure salaries are paid, pensions are received every month; that we send funds to the judiciary and the legislature; that we meet our debt service obligations. That’s what we are doing. It also means we have had to borrow more than we have planned.
“It is a very difficult time. I cannot explain to you how difficult it is, not just for the Federal Government but also for the States. We see increasing reductions in our FAAC revenues. So, FAAC reduces and whenever FAAC reduces, it is a very difficult situation.”
Indeed, not only did the federal government try to sustain the economy purely on loans and more loans which were not applied to productive sectors nor effectively and equitably to infrastructural development, it also resorted to printing money which is the worst style of economic management.
The current Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, during a Senate Committee hearing in March 2024, regaled Nigerians with the sordid picture of how the APC mismanaged the national economy, from 2015 to 2023.
Listen to Wale Edun: “It came from eight years of just printing money not matched by productivity. It’s not like when you earn dollars, and you free the naira alongside it. We are going to audit even the N22.7 trillion printed aimlessly. The consequence of the eight years of printing money without productivity is high inflation confronting the country now,” he said..
Governor Sheriff Oborevwori has decided with great political determination and authority not to borrow, but is also at the same time, paying up and reducing the financial obligations of Delta State in order to safeguard the State from the kind of debt service burden that has crippled the nation under the leadership of the APC. Governor Oborevwori has saved over N205 billion through financial efficiency and gone on to reduce the State debt profile by N180 billion.
Such commitment is not only noble, but can only be executed through a deep sense of leadership responsibility and financial prudence as Oborevwori is demonstrating and it is these achievements in the financial management of the State that the APC is quarreling with.
Even God knows that the APC-led Federal Government is wicked. The clue that APC Federal Government is run by heartless persons can be found in the Book of Proverbs 29: 2, where God said: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan.”
Since APC stole and has continued to steal Nigeria’s Presidency through a well orchestrated abracadabra and the subsequent magical realism of electoral and judicial conjurations, Nigerians have been groaning.
Sadly, the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, as terrible as it was, never never received any criticism from the then National Leader of the party, now President Bola Tinubu. Never did he ever rein in the Buhari administration with a view to calling it to order against malevolent policies of the administration. Instead, Tinubu, during his presidential campaigns, promised to continue from where Buhari’s administration stopped.
Today, Nigerians have now seen how President Bola Tinubu has fulfilled that campaign promise and are feeling it first hand in their homes, in their pockets, and their lives. Nigerians are now wiser, seeing the Tinubu administration dispensing policies without human face, leaving the millions of our teeming masses to groan in hunger and abject poverty.
One had expected the APC propagandists to at least show remorse to Nigerians; but no, they will not. They prefer, out of sheer cluelessness, obdurate arrogance, diversionary misinformation and a provocative attempt with puerile insults, to try to distract Nigerians and Deltans with talks about “misgovernance” when their Party is the very epitome of “misgovernance”, to use their word.
It is the height of mischief for the APC propagandists to speak of “misgovernance” by the PDP in Delta State, when a critical appraisal of the archive will reveal a stretch, replete with records of the good and beneficial deeds of the successive PDP administrations in the State.
The Chief James Onanefe Ibori administration transformed the State from its fledgling underdeveloped status akin to that of a glorified Local Government, into a State worthy of the name and description, empowering the workforce and opening up the three Senatorial districts with roads and other sectoral infrastructure. Higher institutions were established to ease admission bottlenecks of Delta youths eager for tertiary education, and Delta bubbled as the big heart of the country.
Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan came and upped the ante of development with his administration’s three-point agenda which successfully addressed the issues of peace and security; human capital development and infrastructure improvement and became the rallying point for socio-economic development which impacted positively on lives of Deltans. He then initiated the futuristic template of Delta Beyond Oil; an initiative which had the vision to deploy and appropriate earnings from oil to develop the infrastructure and other non-oil sectors in the economy which will inturn, provide multiple strings of income for the State and for the people.
Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa built on transforming the State further with the Five-Point Agenda and Delta, as well as Nigeria, was well on the path of building on the already developmental platforms laid down by the PDP government and achieving tremendous national growth and global recognition, and then Buhari and the APC happened to us like the 10 plagues in biblical Egypt and Nigerians were plunged into increasing hardship and suffering, as we groped from one disaster of misgovernance to another until we got to where we are today.
The concern and expectation of Deltans and Nigerians is that they want to be eased from the harrowing economic hardship foisted on them by the bad policies of the APC-led Federal Government, in the last Nine years which have come increasingly draconian with Nigerians starring at a bleak future in the months and years ahead.
This is the main issue that has brought Deltans and people of Nigeria into cries and lamentations against the Emilokan administration of the APC-Federal Government, so much so that many Nigerians go hungry without meals for days, while transportation costs are unaffordable because of the high cost of fuel imposed on the nation through a not well thought out policy of subsidy removal. All these culminated in the recent #Endbadgovernance protests which was a very loud cry of despair, anguish and frustration from Nigerians.
Propagandists like Ovasa Ogaga and his ilk should not carry their deception too far by trying to distract Nigerians from the misrule and shame of the APC-Federal Government. They should rather show patriotism and solidarity with Nigerians by bringing pressure on the administration of the former APC National Leader, now President Bola Tinubu to end the cruel administration’s strangulating economic policies that has reduced Nigerians to a shadow of themselves.
As for what Delta State is doing to justify its allocation, we’re glad to note that at least the likes of Ogaga Ovasa have admitted that Okpanam/Ibusa bypass and of course the Emevor/Orogun road and of course the Ultramodern state-of-the-art Federal High Court Complex have all been commissioned.
And to educate them further, only recently the Delta State Exco in pursuit of ensuring meaningful infrastructural development across Delta State, as enunciated in the MORE Agenda, approved the construction, reconstruction and rehabilitation of a number of roads across the state ensuring that the new projects are distributed in such a way that all parts of the state – all Senatorial Districts and virtually 23 of the 25 Local Government Areas got at least one project.
The list of the projects speaks volumes of Sheriff’s commitment to fairness, equity and even distribution of projects.
1. Reconstruction of Ohoror-Bomadi Road: Ughelli North/Bomadi/Burutu LGAs;
2 . Construction of Olomoro-Igbide Road: Isoko South LGA.
3. Construction of Emevor-Ivrogbo-Orogun Road Phase 2: Isoko North/Ughelli North LGAs.
4. Otekpo Road, Ellu: Isoko North LGA.
5. Idumu-Etiti Street with a spur to Market Road, Owere-Olubo: Aniocha South LGA.
6. Rehabilitation and asphalt overlay of failed sections of NNPC Housing Complex Road: Uvwie LGA.
7. Ekeye-Ovedhe Close, Okumagba Layout: Warri South LGA.
8. General Hospital Road, Oghara: Ethiope West LGA.
9. Old Sapele/Warri Road from Amukpe Junction to Ikwuehu, with a spur to Ayemidejor Close: Sapele LGA.
10. Orerokpe-Okulohor-Oviri Road: Okpe LGA.
11. Osubi- Okuokoko Road and environs, Phase 1: Okpe/Uvwie LGA.
12. Internal roads and drains in Kurutie/Kurutie internal roads phase 2: Warri South West LGA.
13. Construction of Obitobon-Elolo-Ajaokurogbo-Orubu Road Phase 2, Ogidigben: Warri North LGA.
14. Iyke Oputa Street, Aboh: Ndokwa East LGA.
15. Construction of Issele-Azagba-Otulu Road: Aniocha North and South LGA.
16. Reclamation of gully erosion site along Okpanam-Ibusa bypass Road for the sustainability of the new road: Oshimili North LGA.
Exco also approved the renovation of over 150 Primary Health Care Centres across the state, and the purchase of two Computerized Tomography (CT) scanning machines, one each for the Central Hospital, Warri, and the Delta State University Teaching Hospital (DELSUTH), Oghara, meaning that several wards and Communities in virtually every Local Government Area would benefit from the health improvement investment and our people will no longer have to go to Onitsha or Benin to get first hand and first class medical attention and treatment.
In the same vein the Exco presided over by Governor Sheriff Oborevwori approved N3.55bn as counterpart funding for the 2024 Universal Basic Education Programme which is sure to benefit so many communities in all the Local Government Areas and Senatorial Districts.
Deltans are indeed lucky that, against this backdrop of APC national misgovernance over the years, we now have the baton holder of the administration today in His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, Governor of Delta State, who is doing marvelously well with his M.O.R.E. Agenda and for which Deltans and residents are pleased.
Governor Sheriff Oborevwori has demonstrated a stoic determination to manage Delta into a debt-free State and the relative increase in oil production output, spearheaded by the Enhanced Peace and Security component of the MORE Agenda has established sustainable peace and ensured efficient management of relations with oil producing communities.
Deltans know that Governor Sheriff Oborevwori is working very hard, especially in this early stage of his administration, and they are seeing the good governance in valuable measure.
Governor Sheriff will definitely do M.O.R.E for Deltans as the tenure unfolds.
■ Elder Godslove Preye,
National Chairman,
M.O.R.E. Reality Group,
Wrote in from Ojobo, Delta State.
