South-South leader and former Federal Commissioner of Information, Chief Edwin Clark, yesterday, said the All Progressives Congress, APC, governorship candidate in Delta State, Chief Great Ogboru, is wasting his time, adding that Ogboru would not defeat Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

Clark told Vanguard on phone that by the unwritten power zoning arrangement in the state, Delta North Senatorial District should complete its two terms of eight years by 2023 before power would shift again to Delta Central where Ogboru hails from.


The elder statesman was emphatic that APC should have picked its governorship candidate from Delta North Senatorial District, describing as absurd, the permutation that the APC would use federal might to overrun the state.

His words: “Ogboru is just wasting his time. Ogboru has had his time. They are saying that since Buhari contested elections many times, Ogboru should also contest many times in the state.

“Delta Central Senatorial District has had the governorship through Chief James Ibori for eight years. The South had it for eight years through Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan and the North is having its turn now through Okowa.

“Even at the national level, everybody believes in the zoning arrangement. The North should take four more years to complete its eight-year tenure. That is why the PDP picked a northern candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to slug it out with President Muhammadu Buhari. After 2023, the North would give way for the South.

“Ogboru was not even a member of APC before now. Olorogun O’tega Emerhor, who has been the leader also believes that the unwritten zoning arrangement should continue in the state. It means that whoever should be the governorship candidate of APC should come from the North.

“That was his (Emerhor) argument but they objected to it. What makes Ogboru the only one contesting in Urhobo nation?

“We have grown above that. Ogboru knows how much support I have given him in the past when we had a political quarrel with Ibori.”

•Sourced from a Vanguard report