By Emma Amaize, Regional Editor, South-South & Egufe Yafugborhi
PRINCE Yemi Emiko is the All Progressives Party Congress, APC, Senatorial Candidate in Delta South Senatorial District of Delta State, slugging it out with the incumbent Senator James Manager, an Ijaw, who is gunning for the seat for a record fourth term against the unwritten understanding of the Ijaw, Itsekiri and Isoko ethnic groups that make up the district.

Prince Yemi Emiko

In this interview with Saturday Vanguard in Warri, Emiko not only dismissed the contention over his candidacy by a rival contender, Temi Omatseye, he spoke on the readiness of the electorate in the district to vote out Manager on March 28, who he said had not really contested any election in the district since 2003.

Can you clarify the contention between you and Temi Omatseye over the APC Senatorial ticket in Delta South?

By law and by party provisions, there can only be one candidate for one office from one party for an election. The APC senatorial candidacy cannot be any different. There is only one candidate and that is me. If you go to the INEC website to find the final list of candidates for the 2015 elections, you will find, as at today, only nine names put forward by nine political parties for the Delta South Senatorial seat. My name is the only name representing the APC for this election.

My brother, Temi Omatseye, is just a bad loser, and I see him as somebody being misguided. The reason is simple. He lost out in the primaries. By the way, the primaries were inconclusive, smeared with violence, but the votes that were already cast were rescued despite the violence that attended it. And when they were counted, I scored 434. He scored 229. There was a third candidate. He scored 68 votes. The party held to that and said we were not going to do another primary. They said we stand by this result and that is what we are going by.

So, he raised issues for a re-run and that the primaries were inconclusive and all that, but the party said no, we have investigated the issue, we know what happened, we know who sponsored the crisis, so why going back? So he went to court, but before he went to court, he went to the Appeal Panel because as you know, every political party has a process for redressing grievances after the primaries.

The matter was looked into and the panel said sorry, you have no case! They still gave me the ticket, so he went to court, Federal High Court, Abuja. Two Mondays ago, the matter was thrown out, but I read him in the papers, three days ago, that Omatseye filed a fresh suit. But the merits of the case have not changed, so even if he files 1000 fresh suits, we are going there with our preliminary objection, because Temi Omatseye is not a registered voter in Delta state.

He registered in Lekki, Lagos, and my lawyers went to Abuja and got certified true copies of his registration details. The electoral laws are very clear, if you can’t vote for yourself, why should others vote for you? He knows about all these things but he still goes about making all this noise as if we are in a lawless society, but I have been calm and restraining   my people, telling them that look, first of all we are brothers.

You see all the acts of provocation he is putting up, because you see all the billboards he is painting around town campaigning as if he is a candidate in this election. It is criminal in the first place. The party has written petitions to the Area Commander who has invited him and he has refused to go there. All of this is impunity because we are in a country where people just get up and do what they like. It is wrong.

Recently, some agitators in Burutu and neighboring  Ijaw communities stopped Omatseye and other parties, except PDP, from campaigning in the area, have you taken your campaign to the creek and were you harassed?

I have established that Temi Omatseye is not a candidate for this election, so he has no business going there in the first place, but to answer your question, I have been to those places over and over, and I don’t have any problem or rejection from anybody. I have pictures to prove that.  I am sure you know some of these people in the area. You will see me with Gen. Black, Gen. Roland, and Gen. Boyd, mention them. I have been to those places and I tell you they are as enthusiastic about our project as we ourselves are because they know what we represent.

As you know most of our people in the area have been PDP, but the PDP itself is in the process of burning itself out. So I have been to these places. I meet these ‘generals’, I speak with them and we are planning another trip there.

At the PDP setting, the incumbent governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, an Itsekiri like you, stepped aside his senatorial ambition for Senator Manager in the interest of peace, what makes you think you can withstand James Manager when the governor backed down for him?

The politics of seclusion and divisiveness which they play in PDP is what has happened in the instance you just mentioned. The governor by himself withdrew from the race because if he stood his grounds from the beginning and say I want to face primary and whatever we see, let’s take, that would have been different, but he voluntarily, as it were, withdrew. There might have been some pressure here and there, but he had a choice to stay and say I am going to stick by my ambition, but he said in the interest of peace, in the interest of security of our people, that he is not going to pursue that race to a logical conclusion.

However, James Manager has never contested any election in this state. He has never campaigned for any election in this state. 2015 is the first time ever that James Manager is pasting one poster. Quote me, this is the first time James Manager is printing a single poster to say vote for me, because they don’t vote in our area. They just write results and announce his name. He has been so used to that. He has been so pampered, spoilt. James Manager has been in government all his life. So, our people are asking him now, what more does this man want?

When Olorogun Felix Ibru was governor in Delta state, he was his Commissioner for sports and youth development. He went on to become Chairman, Bomadi Local Government. From there he became first chairman, PDP in Delta state in 1999. He was hardly there for a year before James Ibori made him Commissioner for Works.

By Ibori’s second tenure, he now chose to be a Senator, and he was allowed. They wrote the results first term 2003, and another one 2007. They wrote another result for him.

They don’t vote. He has never faced any stiff election here. They don’t him. I went round the places and they told me this is the first time they have seen a senatorial candidate, even in his own Ijaw areas. He has been pampered and spoilt; now he wants to go for a fourth tenure. We will stop him. Quote me; we will defeat James Manager at the general elections. I am not saying this because it is time for politicking. I am saying it with a serious sense of responsibility.

Let me also emphasize that James Manager is from Delta South and in this senatorial district, there are three distinct tribes, the Itsekiris, the Ijaws and Isokos. Forget the First, Second and Third Republics. The present dispensation started in1999, and we had Stella Omu, an Isoko woman as the first senator for this district under the current democratic experience.

She did one term. Whatever issues or differences she had with James Ibori and all that, she did not get a second term, so the mantle swung to the Ijaws. And you know we have some kind of tacit agreement among these three groups that no need to fight, let’s rotate it amongst ourselves. So the thing went to the Ijaws and we, as Itsekiri people, expected James Manger to do two terms maximum step aside for an Itsekiri to come in, do one or two terms before it then goes back to Isoko and so on and so forth. But James Manager has been there one, two, three terms, now he wants a fourth term.

I have issues with that. We have issues with that in a multi-ethnic environment like Delta South. It is unacceptable. Our people are saying no to that and James Manager should have the moral standing to look back and say yes and step down, but of course the human greed in all of us, if you don’t know how to control it, will take over your sense of judgment and that is what we are seeing all over the place now, but I believe our people will do the right thing at the poll and that is why I believe very strongly that our people will stop him. We will stop him this time around.

How do you intend to stop James Manager?

Our people will vote him out and that is why they are scared of the card readers. A sitting government is the one begging INEC not to use card readers. Can’t you see something is wrong somewhere? They know that if there is free and fair election, we will stop them. So, they don’t want the use of PVCS, they are saying use Temporary Vote Card.

INEC test run the card reader only yesterday in a few units here in our area, and the things worked well. There may have been some hitches here and there which are normal, but overall it was a huge success. James Manager and the PDP people are so afraid of the card readers that they are saying, no, don’t use them.

And we will defeat them, and INEC has put its feet down that no card reader, no elections. In fact, I would have preferred option A4 , so If they say no use of card, fine, but let everybody line up behind his candidate, and we will see if he will get one vote from even his home Akugbene in Bomadi Local Government area. So I am telling you that we will stop him.

What has Manager not done for Delta South that you would like to do?

The question would have been more like what had he done for anybody in this senatorial district?  And the obvious response is James has not done anything. I have gone round and like I said, I was in Patani and I asked them because senators do have constituency projects. I asked them to name or point to one constituency project that Sen. Manager has delivered so far. Before I could even finish asking the question, I heard a loud chorus of no, no, same thing in Bomadi, same in Burutu.

I then told them that I thought maybe because Manager is Ijaw; he was probably pushing all the projects to Ijaw. Again they responded with a thunderous no. I just did that for the sake of politics because I wanted them to disprove me, but they all said no, no, no. So, it is not about what he has done because he has done practically nothing here. There is nothing you can point to and say this is what James Manager has done for the people with all his years in government. That is why we are asking what else does he want?

He is not even accessible. That is one of the biggest issues they have against him. They don’t know him because he is not accessible. We have learnt from that and that is why we have told them that we are going to have three district offices across the senatorial district. We shall have one in Bomadi for the Ijaw people so that I can spend one day of every month in that office where they can have access to me and table issue before me. We will deal with those issues because that is why they elected me to represent them, not a James Manager, who is locked somewhere and nobody can see him.

I will have another office in the Isoko area, most likely at Oleh where I will also spend one day in a month and everybody from that axis will have access to see me and bring their issues. And then, one in Warri here for people in this area so we are saying we are going to be accessible. They will bring their issues and we will deal with them. It is not about vote for me for senate and then when you get there, nobody sees you, you become big man in quote overnight and you get so big headed.

What are you putting on the table for the people of Delta South?

We have taken our plans, our vision to the people in the constituency. Of course we are going to be accessible. That is primary. You need people to bring their issues to you, so that you can understand and help us to reclaim our lives, reclaim our communities. For me, that is key and a critical success factor.

Two, we are going to carry out a needs assessment programme. I am very familiar with all these areas because I spent most of my working life in Chevron Nigeria Limited. I tell you there is hardly any community in Nigeria Chevron does its business that I do not know the in and out and they know me so well as well, whether in Bayelsa, whether in Rivers, anywhere Chevron operates, so Delta state I am most familiar with.

I have told people that the most important senatorial district in this country is Delta South and the reason is simple. This is the only senatorial district where you have two oil terminals, the Forcados and The Escravos, what have our people got to show for it? So, if we contribute so much, we are also due for so much. We are going to work with other like- minded people in my district to draw attention, to pass bills that will bring value to our area in terms of development, tangible development. We shall work with the state government to ensure that DESOPADEC, for instance, delivers.

Right now, I don’t see what DESOPADEC is doing. Under the 13 per cent derivation funds, nearly N15b comes to Delta state every month, 50 per cent of that by act of parliament goes to DESOPADEC for building these areas. I can’t see anything they are doing. DESOPADEC has no business doing bench and table for schools.

If they do that, what will local governments do? We are asking the basic questions and nobody is providing answers. All those billions, where have they gone, where have they entered? So, we need to put their feet to fire and ensure that they spend that money in those areas so that within four years, you can see some transformation. And it is realizable, it is not rocket science. It is just the will and the leadership that we lack.