X-RAYING SENATOR BARRISTER JAMES MANAGER'S 2023 GOVERNORSHIP AMBITION.

 

"2023 is a showdown, where the electorate  of Delta State will unleash a political tsunami by taking back the power that rightly belongs to them. Get ready".... Yugbovwre. 

For starters, Senator James Manager, is a prominent lawyer and politician; an ljaw from  Bomadi Local Government Council Area of Delta state. He is rather, better known as a politician. He has the enviable record of being the pioneer chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Delta state in 1998, when the military conceived and birthed the fourth  republic.

The success of PDP at the gubernatorial elections in Delta state in 1999 which produced Chief James Onanefe Ibori was a big pay-off for him. Barrister James Manager was duly compensated with  an  appointment into the state  executive council.

For good measure, he was wholesomely rewarded with  Commissioner for Works portfolio. A position he held all through the first four years of Chief James Ibori's tenure before seeking new political pastures.

And so in 2003, Barr James Manager through a combination of deft political sagacity, affluence and, of course influence, political brigandage, manipulated himself through electoral chicanery into the Nigerian Senate as the Senator representing Delta south Senatorial District comprising the ethnic nationalities of Isoko, Itsekiri, Ijaw and Urhobo thereby replacing the very cerebral Senator Stella Omu from Isoko,  whose tenure was conspiratorially and dubiously restricted by the Delta state power merchants in the  PDP to only four years in the red chambers. 

It was an open secret that  Senator Stella Omu political journey was ambushed by  James Manager, basically on the strength of a nebulous rotational template which the elders of PDP used in hoodwinking Senator Stella Omu to give up her revered seat in the National Assembly.

Barrister James Manager once in, immediately began cooking devious plans to turn himself a "Senator for life" with no intention of giving up his exalted seat in the red chambers by  consistently resisting every move to concede the senatorial seat to other ethnic groups. 

 James Manager is a happy sit - tight parliamentarian giving no damn to the outcrys for equity, fairness and justice by the other tribes who have long been shortchanged in that senatorial district by his nauseating refusal to respect the extant rotation of power agreement upon which he got to the Senate.

Twenty years in the senate is no bean cake. It aches to acknowledge the fact that he and, his kinsmen are  impervious to wise counsels to step down from the senate.They intimidate anybody and everybody with huge cash and in some cases AK 47 rifles to cower people.

 It is pertinent at this juncture to let him know and, I'm sure he knows long ago that the brewing  anger over the years has reached a boiling point and the bulwark of opposition to the monopolization of that seat spanning a whopping twenty years is coming from persons of different ethnic nationalities. 

The disdain and contempt Senator James Manager and his handful of Ijaw PDP faithfuls have for equity, fair play and justice was further highlighted when in 2015, sequel to the emergence of Senator Dr Infeanyi Okowa and Barrister  Kingsley Otuaro as the governor and deputy governor, James Manager and his minions in the PDP,  true to type,  characteristically resisted and perverted the call to cede the Senatorial slot to either the Itsekiri or the Isokos in view of their agreements. 

The Ijaws covertly discarded the power rotation agreement they earlier entered into with the Itsekiris and Isokos and thereof proceeded to greedily usurp both the exalted office of the deputy governor and the senatorial seat without batting an eyelid or giving a hoot to whose ox their avarice for power is gored

Thus for eight years, of the four ethnic nationalities in Delta South Senatorial District, only the ljaws  would hold on to two very high offices in total disregard to the principle of rotation instituted by PDP and made sacrosanct by the G-3 pressure group or the 3 I's.

The 3 I's is an amalgam of the Ijaws, Isokos and Itsekiris  established with the mandate to fight for and protect the political interest of its members by strengthening the bonds of co-habitation, equity, fairness and justice amongst themselves.

Ironically, a tendentious character like James Manager who had continually and callously reneged on the principles of rotation as canvassed by Delta state PDP and 3 'I's is coming around in 2021 to jostle for an obnoxious rotation of the governorship slot to the Ijaws in 2023. 

 This is most repugnant. What a hypocritical sound bite coming  from a persistent desecrator of the sacred mantra of equity, fairness and justice premised on principle of rotation.

Even granted, what are his achievement(s) as a former Commissioner of works and the longest serving senator in Nigeria to warrant his constituents nay Deltans riding shotgun for him? 

Who can sincerely identify with  any single enduring legacy of Senator James Manager that has truly impacted or contributing positively to the generality of the long suffering  people in his constituency and Delta State at large.

 Devoid of any bias, and every relevant criterion duly considered, it is safe to say that this man is a monumental failure. One  suffering from hubris and entitlement mentality.

 Thus, there is the urgent need to bring him to heel before he does irreparable harm to himself and the relative enduring peace existing among all ethnic nationalities in the state. Delta State is not the personal fiefdom of Senator James Manager and his band of AK -47 gun totting brigands. Nope! Deltans can not be forced to relinquish their hard earned patrimony to a self serving misfit who could not develop his backwaters homestead, yet lives in delusion about becoming the governor of Delta State. Like in one of James Hadley Chase's books, he's indeed a "Joker in the park".

On a personal note, we very well appreciate his exponential rise to political fame and has every reason to thank God for that.  Here was a man who hitherto lived from hand to mouth, occupying a three- bedroom apartment with accumulated arrears of unpaid rent, before transmuting into a billionaire with several mouth watering properties sprawling every major Nigerian city and abroad. it is no longer news that the mercurial transformation of our Methuselah senator has indeed elicited a slew of garrulous rumours about his imperious proclivity for self centeredness and "only me go chop" mentality.

Senator James Manager should have ordinarily long before now been a special guest of the EFCC and Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRSC) to go explain his stupendous wealth and records of his tax remittances.

This man with unexplained sources of unquantifiable wealth is still prancing around a free man and  flaunting his ill gotten wealth as his ticket to the Unity House Asaba.

I deliberately elected for now to be generic in this epistle but would gladly be more particular in details if am provoked with an infantile response which might be matched with a petition to the anti corruption agencies.

  In more organized and democratically developed societies, character and integrity are the basic tickets to power and leadership.

Now, must Deltans continue to allow all shades of unsavoury characters browbeat us with their ill gotten wealth and thereafter elevate themselves to positions of authority without a whimper from us?  The answer is no! 

Our docility is at its zenith. Our mumu don do! It's high time we  fought back to rescue our dear state from the vice- holds of these carpetbaggers and men without a pint of milk of human kindness.

 Deltans are more than ever resolved that politicians like James Manager with no goodwil and tangible scorecards of selfless service to the people in terms of job creation and human capacity development can never become occupants of the Government House. Let them continue kneeling down before their godfathers to anoint them.

2023 is a showdown, where the electorate  of Delta State will unleash a political tsunami by taking back the power that rightly belongs to them. Get ready! 

Kenneth Yugbovwre Mph,

Conflict Resolution,

Trinity College,

Dublin- Ireland