Mideno Bayagbon and Fred Latimore as slumdogs seeking new jobs with a man of the streets, By Tonye Timi

The foxy schemes and plots to lead Sherriff Oborevwori’s media team as governor of Delta state have put so many media rookies in anxiety and peril. Anyone who can put pen to paper is writing fables to please Sherriff Oborevwori, their yarns making them feel entitled to become media handlers and megaphones to an incoming government.

It has come down to the more you abuse Omo-Agege and the APC, the more chances you have of becoming Chief Press Secretary to an illusionary Oborevwori Government. Mideno Bayagbon and Fred Latimore Oghenesivbe are already masturbating over the possibilities of new jobs and new titles. They are agitated to lead the media team of a Sherriff Oborevwori government, which, if allowed to stand, will sooner than later head to despotism and fascism to mask unavoidable failures. Many others are also in on the hustling even if they are from the outside looking in. All of them are on the scramble and writing to impress with fancy tales and self-serving analysis. They are all trying to outdo one another to impress an analphabet governor who neither reads nor writes and described himself once as a product of the streets.

It is obvious these hustlers for office do not know what it means in the Nigerian context to describe oneself as a man of the streets. A man of the streets will not run a policy driven, systems operated paper-utilizing office, neither will he run a government deploying technocrats to achieve set goals and add values to society. Every person of cerebral quality will be a threat and a suspect to the man of the streets who survives in physicality and brigandage. Goals and objectives are set by technocrats in government. A man of the streets operates on his whims for survival and triumphalism. He wades through urban jungles and the wilds to subdue people in shouting matches and conquer without the niceties of the written word. Every opposing opinion is interpreted as a challenge. So, how do you establish an organized system of public communications in an environment suffused with atavism and suspicion? I have never heard MC Oluomo saying he needs the services of a communication professional.

Tyranny and witch-hunt have already started in Isoko, Patani, Udu, Ethiope, Ika, Oshimili, Ukwani, etc. and other places in the state, even before Sherriff takes over. It can only grow worse. But our perverse joy will be that those who enable tyranny are always the first victims. Niccolo Machiavelli made clear that those who help others climb to power are always the first victims. So let the music play.

Fred Latimore is a lawyer who was once a Disco Jockey in Benin and now claims to be a Communication Strategist. No one is sure where he got his training in communications, but he has made good for himself by flaunting titles and claims. No one really bothers to read his long rambling essays that many times turn English language to an obstacle race, but they serve to impress his clients. And that is what really matters for the money. The medium is the message, but for my friend Latimore, the money is the message.

Latimore recently postulated: “2023: Expelling Cairo Ojuogboh ‘ll not cure Senator Agege’s bad image – PDP spokesperson….Says Oborevwori not a match for failed opposition candidates.”

Now, tell me what Latimore means with the title and rider above? Is it that Oborevwori is not a match for opposition candidate or that opposition candidates are not matches for Oborevwori? This can only be a product of a jaundiced mind.

Again hear a paraphrase from Mideno Bayagbon, another hatchet writer, in a long ignoble missive gleefully published in Vanguard newspapers, while abusing his privilege as a former editor of that paper: “Noted that in a sane society, Senator Agege ought to be gnashing his teeth in prison for stealing Mace in the National Assembly, a criminal act captured live on national television.” How uninformed and low can Mideno Bayagbon go to in his desperation to work in government as information manager? To know that this fellow was once an editor of Vanguard Newspaper put uncanny questions on the mobility and qualifications of Vanguard newspapers personnel.

Removal of maces are occurrences in parliaments across democracies in the world. Maces are not objects to be bought or sold. A mace is custom-made and has no value outside parliament, so nobody steals a mace. Somebody also needs to tell Mideno Bayagbon that nothing done in parliament by a member is justiciable or a crime. Lloyd Russell-Moyle snatched and took away the mace of the British Parliament in 2018, was stopped at the door, and the mace taken from him. He was suspended only for the remaining hours of the days sitting.

Mideno spent an entire night writing a howler that eventually ended up doing damage to his esteem. He spent the entire space writing on the scheming by the parties before the election and had no time and space to write about the election itself. Read one of his screamers: “Okowa turned the applecart and devolved power to the units and the wards, built several layers of leadership that are not dependent on any big politician. The structure of PDP in the state today is built in the image of Governor Okowa, who has control of it. That is why Ibori’s candidate and others were beaten silly during the primaries. That explains why those who defected to the APC could not move with the structures in their areas, and could not deliver the votes”.

Impressive postulation and keen observations except that the same Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa and PDP, the focus of Bayagbon’s shameless adulation, lost Delta state in the presidential election. The same man and political party “in whose image“ the structure of the party is built and “who has control of it”, scored only 35% of the total votes cast in Delta state presidential election in which he is a candidate and the state where he is a sitting governor.

Not done, you’ll like to ask: “did Bayagbon ever hear of $7000 (Seven Thousand American Dollars) only, bribery given to delegates by Okowa and Delta State Government, questionably sourced from Delta State treasury to vote for Sherriff to win the PDP primaries? Why did Okowa have to bribe delegates to primaries if he had such control over them?”

If you find these writings solicitous and demeaning of grown adult men, please be a little forgiving. These men are fighting over jobs from a man of the streets. Somebody needs to tell these tramping bogeymen that Sherriff by the nature of his personality, neither reads nor writes, and that they do not have to publicly engage in self-abuse to win his favour.

Now you know why these gentlemen are drawing daggers to hound Ovie Omo- Agege even when their client Sherriff Oborevwori has been named as the temporary holder of the certificate of return of the 2023 governorship election in Delta state. For them, the harder they hit Omo-Agege, the more favourably Sherriff will consider them for the job that will keep them fed for the next four years. So why not use a sledgehammer.

But you see, the governorship election petition tribunal will not be looking at hard-hitting sledgehammers or who shouts loudest. They will be looking for evidence of electoral malpractices. They will be looking at technology for accreditation, the IREV, BVAS and at who snatched ballot boxes and stuffed them with illegal votes. They will also look out for other malfeasance and at how the figures from polling units add up. These undertakings won’t need shouting and sledgehammers.

But we know that the PDP will follow up with efforts to compromise the process. We equally know that they will fail in their endeavors.

▪Dr. ‘Tonye Timi, Deputy Director, Media & Publicity Committee, Delta State APC Campaign Organization.