On Oborevwori’s bold move to refocus Delta

By ‘TONYE TIMI 

As Governor Sheriff Oborevwori prepares for re-election in 2027, his government will once again become the focus of critical discourse both as incumbent and as the most consequential player in a dramatically changed political environment in Delta State. Gone are the fist pumping slogans of PDP and welcome the chants of APC and the pivot to the federal centre. There will be a lot to talk about his tenure so far as governor and much more to engage discourse on the tumultuous political developments in the state. 

The governor has obviously recorded some mountain of achievements to stand for him with pride. 

First, he has managed the state finances far better than anyone expected and then the infrastructural growth in three years has surprised even the most ardent critic of his ascendancy to the governorship of the state in 2023.

All round, Gov. Sheriff has reasons to hold his head high when with the academic and professional class who expressed doubts about his capacity to hold the state economy and politics together considering the high borrowings prior to the handover to him in 2023. He should be proud of the new state he is working to create. A state which continues to record progress with his growing stamp of performance.

At the beginning of his tenure, the fear was palpable in economic cycle that Delta State has over borrowed -that the economy being handed over to Oborevwori was too leveraged and too exposed to banks. The fear of debt overhang on the state, raised the spectre of economic collapse during the tenure of the new governor, coupled with the political turmoil of the time. The prognosis was not very promising for the state.

Sheriff put a lie to the expectations of pessimists who expected that his government will be buried in debts -that he would spend his first tenure paying and settling conflicts with restless creditors. 

The first pleasant surprise was his announcement barely six months of his taking office that he was contracting Julius Berger, the respected civil engineering company in the country to build flyover bridges in Warri metropolis which was eventually completed and paid for in record time. Those well laid out bridges created the image of Sheriff as a strongman governor with big ambitions, wrestling creditors to the ground while insisting on building enduring structures for the future of his state.

These big projects jolted the entire state to a new reality of great possibilities, big ideas and performances. Delta State had stayed too long in the mud, plodding along like a never-do-well, building roads that wash away with the rains and investing in power projects that never bring a watt of electricity to the people. Sheriff has shown himself to be unafraid to dream big for Delta State and pursue those dreams in time to achieve the rapid development of the entire state

He has deepened and expanded his impressive big project count to include four flyover bridges in Warri, Effurun, Ughelli and Agbor, covering the three development zones of the state. He made bold to hire the services of Julius Berger, by far the biggest and most consequential civil engineering company in the country. Unprecedented in the history of development in the state, the governor was able to bring this construction giant to Delta State to begin the implementation of lasting development projects in the state. 

In many sectors, the man is trying to pursue the public good, easing the movement of goods and services necessary to improve commerce, stamping strong footprints in tertiary education by building a new impressive campus of Southern Delta University at Orerokpe. He is also expanding facilities and institutions in public health with the construction of a new College of Health Technology at Ovrode, Isoko North Local Government. He is also constructing a top of the class building of the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the Southern Delta University, Ozoro. The completion of the trans-Warri road has finally opened rural communities for trade and supplies with the urban communities in that sector of riverine Delta.

Sheriff has demonstrated boldness in the pursuit of development in the state, refusing to be restrained by doubts and delays or indecision. He has been able to set goals and demonstrated audacity in action not seen in previous governments in Delta State. The governor has demonstrated an independence of mind in actions which has made it impossible to circumscribe his rule as feared at the beginning of his tenure.

 In these three years, Sheriff has proven himself to be a man of his own, untethered to anyone’s dominance. This has helped him to win the trust of both the creditors to the state as well as the people he governs and has not denied his people the benefits of democratic rule. 

This is the sense in which Oborevwori shares a commonality with Ronald Reagan, the cowboy actor who became president of the USA in 1980. He was pivotal both for the dominance of the American economy and culture in the eighties; he was also crucially instrumental in America’s defeat of the Soviet bloc in the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. 

But Reagan was initially underrated by the pompous American establishment as a man of the streets and outdoors, not schooled in the language and traditions of the recondite political institutions.

Sheriff’s experience and knowledge of the streets and outdoors of Delta are no different from Reagan’s experiences with the everyday life of the working American people. Scoffed at initially by the technocratic class as was Reagan, Sheriff has gone ahead to prove that experience of the real world will always be relied upon for superlative performance in office. 

Sheriff is building a new sense of pride in Delta State, creating superior structures across the state to foster pride in a new sense of belonging; also creating new standards of governing performance that reflects superiority of thoughts and willful actions. These willed actions do not rely on pouring asphalt on the roads and pretending to call it tarred but procuring the best engineering minds and working with technical and professional hands to deliver world class engineering projects.

Sheriff has just succeeded in pivoting Delta State to the federal centre, to the embrace of federalism and has moved the state away from the provincialism that dominated the thoughts and actions of the old PDP establishment in the state. The people watch to see how the courage reflected in this pivot will work for the state but Sheriff’s hope is to build a new federalist spirit into the political optics of the state as Delta State is so underrepresented in federal institutions in Nigeria. 

Sheriff wants to correct the inherent underrepresentation of Delta State in the federal political space, a state that is so central to the nation’s economic survival with its massive oil revenue contributions to the national economy.

Delta State needs bold actions from its ruler, decisive and unequivocal actions, not the tentative grandstanding of pseudo intellectuals who have occupied the seats of power in the state. Who by the time they are done with showboating and intellectualising, projects are already abstracted and abandoned. We recall the Oghareki Power Project, the Warri Industrial Business Park, the many years of inaction on the Asaba-Ughelli Road, the many years of asphalt pouring on the Warri-Agbor Road, the Kwale Power Project and many others that liter the state. These abandoned projects have wasted scarce developmental resources and dissipated energy and focus.

Sheriff has demonstrated laser focus and speed in project conceptualisation, construction and delivery, dispensing with the abstraction of ideas and dissipation of energy, trusting on the men of expertise to draw up project works and execute action.

The boldness and confidence in contracting Julius Berger who everyone believes is the biggest and the best civil engineering firm in Nigeria to implement civil works in the state is an aspect of that boldness that is reflecting on the development strides in the state.

Sheriff is a welcome relief in restoring confidence to the grit and boldness in action in government. We can only hope that the people renew his mandate to continue to build the state and restore its pride of place in the comity of states in Nigeria.

•Dr. Timi is the Executive Director, Corporate Services of the South/South Development Commission.