By Enewaridideke Ekanpou
A tide is a tide anywhere, but a tide assumes connotative colours when it becomes triangular in build and action. Like a cumulonimbus cloud endowed with both positive and negative potentials, there must be something hidden behind a triangular tide. There must be something equally iconographic about a triangular tide too when viewed imagistically. The iconography of a triangular tide tells a deeper story best understood by students of mysticism, particularly when it is symbolically carved around the Governor of Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori.
Governor Oborevwori is a product of two oppositional political forces that deployed ‘capacitation’ and ‘incapacitation’ as political weapons of goal realisation in 2023. Neither of these two oppositional political forces was disposed to being divorced from its ideological convictions, which daily bred a large following—sometimes within the same political formation that shelters all. Like barnacles stuck to mangrove roots, these two oppositional political forces firmly held and pursued their ideological persuasions without distractions in 2023. It had the echoes of a furious flood devotedly at work within its geographically marked time and space.
The political forces of capacitation democratically sought to enthrone Oborevwori as governor of Delta State because they believed he had the needed administrative magic wand to end the political plagues of Deltans. Contrarily, while the visionary forces of capacitation were strategically at work, the forces of incapacitation also sought to terminate this widely applauded governorship dream with an imaginative creation that Oborevwori had educational deficiencies which demanded disqualification from the governorship race. Upon these imagined deficiencies, the struggle to stop him resulted in 38 lawsuits. These 38 lawsuits were vigorously pursued to crumble his political ambition. Oborevwori emerged from this deliberately muddied fight stronger and healthier than even the legendary phoenix and the honey badger (ratel). From the politically muddied waters created to disable him politically, Governor Oborevwori emerged a stainless creature who had a great dream for Deltans like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.
From the tussle between the two oppositional political forces in the rhetorically embellished, turgid scramble for political space in 2023, Oborevwori became the emergent political third force. However, unlike Wole Soyinka’s ‘third force’, memorably captured in The Man Died, which was intellectually built in the days of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–70 to centre on the utilisation of “the ensuing military stalemate to repudiate and end both the secession of Biafra and the genocide-consolidated dictatorship of the Army” (19), Governor Oborevwori’s third force was ideologically envisioned to end political persecution, political marginalisation and developmental blackout in Delta State. The beloved preoccupation of Governor Oborevwori was that no Deltan must be serpentined by political persecution and developmental blackout.
Stainless and stronger from the vindictively muddied waters created by the forces of incapacitation, a tide now flows around Governor Oborevwori. The tide has a triangular formation that terminates in the unity of three forces. These three forces carry theological echoes of the biblical Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Pulled irresistibly like a furious flood in its geographically and geometrically marked season, the triangular tidal flow is today driven unstoppably by the infrastructural, educational and ideological radiance of Governor Oborevwori in his undistracted pursuit of his vision of the rapid development of Delta State in all spheres of human engagement.
Captivated by Oborevwori’s visible developmental radiance, which is devoid of discrimination in its spread, Delta Central, Delta North and Delta South Senatorial Districts have ideologically forged a trinity of support from their own foundry. This forged trinity of support is patterned theologically upon the Trinity of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is a stirring allegorical appropriation of a biblical discourse comfortably applied to politics!
Activated by the formation of a trinity of support from their tripartite foundry, a certain triangular tide has begun a journey of victory from the three senatorial districts of Delta State. The triangular tide journeys from the north, south and central to Osubi. From Osubi, it journeys to Asaba. Asaba is seen as the termination point of the triangular tide. Unmistakably outlined in the tidal flow is the fact that there are no longer political forces of incapacitation in Delta State politics in 2027. This is comprehensively communicated by the trinity of the three senatorial districts in Delta State. For Governor Oborevwori in 2027, it would be a mere effortless enactment of the democratic ritual of casting the votes for him without any waiting oppositional tide lurking around any of the senatorial districts. The triangular tide in Delta State has journeyed to all the brooks, canals, rivers and tributaries.
A people piloted by discernment in any political engagement know that any APC dugout canoe journeying to Asaba for Oborevwori or for any other candidate would not encounter the threat of navigational disaster because all the creeks, brooks, canals, rivers and tributaries have been sufficiently alerted and aligned by the triangular tide, which had long carried out reconnaissance and feasibility operations. Governor Oborevwori’s radiant performance record of commitment to bursary awards and scholarships to Delta State students alone through the Delta State Bursary and Scholarship Board from 2023 to 2026 can enfeeble, disable and dismantle any waiting navigational challenge in the river of politics in Delta State in 2027. What about the recent provision of 50 fishing boats, 15-horsepower Yamaha outboard engines and fishing nets to fishermen in Warri South, Warri North and Warri South-West Local Government Areas of Delta State by Governor Oborevwori as quintessential components of his broader vision of empowerment for Deltans?
Regulated by the triangular tide, which is geographically and geometrically marked in Delta South, Central and North Senatorial Districts, the electoral victory of Governor Oborevwori in 2027—as respectively echoed by Dr Julius Takeme, the Executive Chairman of Burutu Council, and other political heavyweights during the gathering of the Delta South Senatorial District at Brown Hill Event Centre in Warri on September 10, 2026—is a concluded matter. To align correspondingly with this tidal allegory, traditional rulers of Urhobo extraction have publicly pronounced Governor Oborevwori as the 2027 sole governorship candidate in the Delta Central Senatorial District. This is inexorably the course steadily taken by the triangular tide in all three senatorial districts in Delta State.
Incontrovertibly, a matter that allegorically enjoys the imprimatur and blessings of the Trinity of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, imagistically suggested and emblazoned by a triangular tide, is beyond the puny incursions of mortals who are habitually excited by spoiler tasks lethally reinforced with sustained psychological warfare on the political front.
•Dr Ekanpou writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State
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