The Ethiope West Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has exonerated former Governor James Ibori from a recent media publication by the Oghareki Traditional Council of Chiefs (Oguedio) which accused him of marginalizing the community in the allocation of government projects and appointments.

In a statement signed by its Chairman, Hon. Onome Ojo, the party tendered apologies to Ibori over the media publication which, it said, was as “an undeserved affront to his revered personality”.

Recall that the leadership of the Oghareki Traditional Council of Chiefs had written a strongly worded and emotion-laden open letter to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, alleging that Oghareki community- one of the two sub-clans in Oghara kingdom- had been marginalized and treated as a slave in the areas of elective/appointive positions and distribution of government projects since 1998.

In the letter jointly signed by the Chairman/spokesman of the Council (Unugbrogodo), Chief Destiny Okwe and 13 others, the agitators specifically accused Ibori of shortchanging the community, treating its indigenes as second class citizens and conniving with former Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan to cede a substantial part of their land to the Itsekiris. The only reprieve, they said, was to seek an autonomous kingdom and crown a monarch of their choice.

Reacting to the allegations after an emergency meeting on Sunday, the party described the media publication as “unprovoked and ill-motivated”, declaring that “the PDP in Ethiope West hereby denounces the publication and totally dissociates itself from the claims contained therein”.

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The statement read in part “Every community has an inalienable right to self-determination; that is a fundamental human right we do not wish to contend, but we strongly believe that politics and tradition are two separate entities that must not be unequally yoked.

“The allocation of elective and appointive positions is purely a political party affair with no communal or traditional colouration and we expect that if for any reason a community feels marginalized, then it behoves the political class to draw attention to such perceived neglect instead of maligning our national political leader, Chief James Ibori.

“Dragging Chief Ibori into traditional issues is rather self-serving and smacks of how low some people can go to smear the hard-earned reputation of others for whatever reason. Chief Ibori is one of the greatest political assets God gave to us in Ethiope West and we cannot stand akimbo while his character is being assassinated.

“As we continue to assess the situation to determine the best way out, we wish to passionately apologize to Chief Ibori as a party for this unwarranted public damage and we also appeal to the aggrieved community to do so as part of reconciliatory efforts”.

VANGUARD