XCLUSIVE – Ochei to Challenge Delta North Senatorial Results in Court

Rt Hon Victor Ochei

Rt Hon Victor Ochei will be heading to the court any moment from now to challenge the Delta North Senatorial results. Xclusive Magazine is unable to ascertain when exactly the papers will be filed, but we have gathered on good authority that it will definitely not be too long.

Ochei is said to have deliberately delayed going to court until after the April 11 Gubernatorial elections in order not to jeopardise the “Anioma sentiments and aspiration,” which Dr Ifeanyi Okowa’s gubernatorial candidacy represented.

Now that the gubernatorial election has come and gone with a well-deserved victory for Okowa and Anioma Nation, Ochei is now set to go for broke to reclaim his stolen mandate.

Xclusive Magazine is unable to establish if the former speaker of Delta State House of Assembly will be praying the courts for an outright cancellation of the entire results from Delta North or ask for only the results from specific polling units or wards, particularly in Oshimili North and Ika Local Government Areas where electoral malpractices are allegedly perpetuated on massive scales, be cancelled.

Xclusive Magazine can authoritatively report that the Senatorial candidate of Accord Party (AP) has these past 2 weeks since after the senatorial election to quietly gather mountain of documented evidence of illegal thumb printing, snatching of ballot boxes and results falsification carried out by the agents of his opponent, Barrister Peter Nwaoboshi of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and the officials of the State Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which had quickly declared Nwaoboshi the winner of the March 28 election result in spite of these glaring irregularities at different polling Units.

“Every Delta Northerner knows that the election was massively rigged by PDP to Nwaoboshi’s favour. So there is this sense among Ochei’s supporters that their principal was robbed, and that Nwaoboshi’s purported victory is a stolen mandate that must be reclaimed,” said a source inside Team Ochei.

The source further revealed to Xclusive Magazine that the former speaker of Delta State House of Assembly is feeling particularly betrayed by the inglorious role Okowa played to scuttle his senatorial ambition, not only by openly taking sides with Nwaoboshi in a contest between two Anioma sons that he is expected to at least remain neutral, but also by aiding and abetting the massive rigging of the elections in Ika Local Government, which is Okowa’s immediate constituency.

Xclusive Magazine reported on 31 December 2014 that Ochei would decamp to Accord Party from PDP to run for Senate. And that the Delta State Governor-elect, then the PDP gubernatorial candidate, had not only given Ochei his blessings, but even promised to deploy his vast and formidable political structure to help him realize his senate ambition.

But midstream into Ochei’s senatorial campaign, Okowa had made a u-turn. While Ochei was vigorously campaigning for Okowa while on his own campaign tour, Okowa was somewhere else raising Nwaoboshi’s hands before the voters.

In spite of Okowa’s betrayal and open bias, Ochei had in a statement on Thursday, 10 March 2015 gone ahead to appeal to his teeming supporters across the State to eschew bitterness and cast their votes for Okowa, noting that he represents the Anioma aspiration in the 11 April gubernatorial election.

“After the last Senatorial election, my personal sense of outrage over our stolen mandate did not and will not blind me to the general sentiments and aspiration of the Anioma people, who desire above all else, to be equal partners and stakeholders in our Delta dream,” he said.

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