One Pot, One Party: Why APC Should Win Delta in 2027

By Dr Festus Okubor

The defection of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori from the PDP to the APC was no more just a headline. It was the lid coming off a pot that had been simmering for 25 years.

The man with the ladle crossed the floor, and Delta State crossed the line with him. The only honest truth for 2027 is that the state under Governor Sheriff will make its defection true at the polls, thus severing the 25 year long reign on the PDP. The statement it affirms is that, it is not the party, but the people in the party.

A governor without the support of his Senators is like a cook without firewood. He can add seasoning to the soup, but he can’t keep it simmering. That’s why the next election isn’t just for one seat, one district.

That’s a matter of coherence. And in 2027, there is only one name for coherence, an APC Clean sweep of the Governorship and the three Senatorial districts.

The just concluded primaries provided evidence that the realignment is real, not merely rhetorical; Deltans didn’t sit on the sidelines, they voted peacefully.

A fact worth stating loudly is that, in a state whose electoral history has known the smell of smoke, Governor Oborevwori and his Deputy, Monday Onyeme, voted and lauded the conduct as there was no smoke anywhere. This is the sound of a party providing leadership on how to do it correctly.

APC which once had been dismissed as a far-off challenger in Delta provides a new rhetoric; in Delta South, Senator Joel-Onowakpo emerged victorious, Sen. Dafinone beat the mighty Omo-Agege in Delta Central (a result unthinkable two cycles back, and a sign that the party is no longer anybody’s personal fiefdom) and in the Delta North, the people produced its own shockwave as the immediate past governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, floored the incumbent senator, Ned Nwoko. This is the definition of three districts, three decisions, one direction.

Read that again: the current governor and the immediate past governor now stand in the same kitchen cooking from the same menu. In any community that still cares, when both men who have held the ladle since 2015 agree that Delta’s future lies with the APC, the argument is over.

This is not a handful of aggrieved politicians crossing the aisle. This is the whole recent leadership of the state arriving at the same conclusion simultaneously.

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The strategic case for a sweep in the next election is not complex. This is because a split Delta made up of APC governor in the middle of opposition senators, is a recipe for gridlock. Budgets get stuck in committees.

Nominations dead in chamber. The creeks of the south, the highlands of the central and the plains of the north pull in different directions.

We must understand that Government is a negotiation with itself. As Deltans we know that feeling all too well after the PDP’s quarter-century: a state rich in oil and poor in delivery, throwing the same pot with the same hand as communities waited for their portion.

It’s is a clean sweep that can change that geometry. It gives the governor senators who agree with his agenda, districts that agree with his argument, and a state that can finally move in one direction.

It makes the three senatorial zones partners, not battle grounds. It’s the difference between three cooks fighting over one stove and one kitchen working from one menu.

The critics will caution against one-party dominance. It’s a fair warning, and Delta’s heard it before, always from the party that was doing the dominating. But dominance is only bad when it is undeserved.

The APC in Delta is not inheriting power, it is building it, primary by primary, defection by defection. And a party that has to fight to win each seat is a party that has to deliver to keep them. A sweep does not end competition; it moves inside the tent, into primaries, into accountability, into the bruising business of keeping promises.

There is also a deeper symbolism to it, and Deltans feel it even if they can’t name it.

For twenty-five years, the Ukodo of Delta politics has remained in the kitchen of the same family. The Governor’s defection was not a betrayal of that kitchen, it was a refusal to let the meal burn. When the cook changes parties the pot does not go cold it gets a fresh fire. A full APC victory in 2027 will not be the end of Delta’s healthy diversity. It would be the sustainability of its oneness. Urhobo, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Isoko and Anioma no longer rationing their portions by who controls the ladle, but sitting together at a table they all helped to set.
The alternative is the half-measure, and the half-measure is what Delta has already gone through. A state that elects an APC governor and then gives two of its three senate seats to a party licking the wounds of defection is a state voting against itself. It’s like lighting a pot on fire and then placing it in a draft. It is equivalet to making a road from Asaba and stopping it in a bush.

2027 is therefore not a referendum of the party. It is a referendum on direction.” The primaries are finished. The defections have spoken volumes. The only message left to send is the one that finishes the sentence: Delta is no longer a PDP state waiting to be wrested away. Delta is an APC state learning to govern, and it needs all its hands on the same ladle. Every vote from every Deltan to the ballot of the different APC candidates is contributing to the
one pot, One party and one Delta. And that is the only way the broth feeds us all.