O’tega Emerhor: Buhari will get 2m votes from Delta in 2019

O’tega Emerhor, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Delta state, says President Muhammadu Buhari will secure two million votes from Delta in 2019.

In 2015, Buhari got 418,519 votes from the entire six south-south states, 48,910 from Delta.

But speaking with reporters at the end of a meeting with Abba Kyari, chief of staff to the president, on Thursday, Emerhor said Buhari’s performance would boost his chances in the coming presidential election.

Accompanied by Ima Niboro, ex-spokesman of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Emerhor said Buhari’s achievements in the Niger Delta outweigh those  of Jonathan who hails from the region.

“We know that delivering the president in 2019 has become very easy in Delta state for multiple reasons. The president has performed very well, he has been very good to the south-south; he has reactivated the amnesty programme; he has sorted out the Maritime University in the Ijaw-Ishekiri side of Delta, and he has done a lot for us in Delta,” he told the state house correspondents.

“We have the minister of state petroleum and the minister of transportation from south-south, the N-Power programme is working so all these have created the enabling environment for us to deliver the President in 2019.

“In 2015, we had President Jonathan who is from the south-south, that created an emotional issue but w have seen now that even when Jonathan was in power, he did not do for Delta what President Buhari has done for us. The Ogoni cleaning exercise that is going on there is one of the major thing we can count on. The east-west road is being completely rehabilitated and that did not happen when one of our own son was the President. So, we are very very confident that the south south this time around wants to belong to the center and that is why we are going to be able to deliver the president there.”

The former governorship candidate of the APC in Delta also said his party could wrestle power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.

Emerhor alleged that Ifeanyi Okowa, the incumbent governor of the state, had lived below expectation.

“Let me tell you, we are so fortunate that the Governor of Delta state, who is a PDP man, is not doing anything. Delta has a lot of resources and the expectation is that the state should be doing better than Edo state for example, which is our neighbour but the APC governor in Edo is doing so well; even Willie Obiano in Anambra that doesn’t having anything is doing so well,” he said.

“So it’s so obvious that the finances of Delta state are not being applied and everyone in Delta is now convinced that APC must takeover because they produce performing governors.”

On the crisis which trailed the congresses in the Delta chapter of APC, Emerhor said the issues were not peculiar to the state.

“The issue of congresses and division did not happen only in Delta. It happened across the country but this is the period of reconciliation,” he said.

“There is a group that did not work with the majority of the people in Delta; we formed a unity group in Delta that had so many governorship aspirants and leaders working together. But as you know, the Ogboru and Omo-Agege group put their own governorship aspiration ahead and decided to work separately but the move we are making is to bring everybody together, provide a level playing field so that all the governorship aspirants will work together because they will have a fair ground and one of them will emerge.

“But the great objective we have is how to deliver the president in Delta State 2019. That is our priority and the ground is ripe for us to take over that state and deliver two million votes for President Buhari in 2019.”