Delta APC frown at politicisation of community development associations
By Dave Okpogadie, Asaba
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Delta State, has Condemned in strong terms what it described as politicisation of Community Development Associations by the PDP government in the state led by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.
The Delta State government had come out with what was described as arrangements to regulate the constitution of community development associations in the state.
According to the new arrangement, the Women Affairs Ministry is to superintend the “registration” of these associations, even as it is to exercise oversight functions over them, while the Ministry of Justice will be responsible for drafting the laws that will govern their activities.
Reacting to the government arrangement, the Publicity Secretary of the APC, Barrister E.V. Onojeghuo, said it was just another especially dangerous and indeed, most irresponsible plot by Okowa administration to politicise what have always been nonpartisan umbrella platforms for the indigenes and ancestral families of the various localities to develop their towns, villages and communities within the context of an overarching paradigm of togetherness, inclusiveness and plurality.
“In short, Governor Okowa’s latest ploy to plunge Delta State into statewide and protracted crisis is basically a plot to dismantle already existing structures devoid of political affiliation into fullblown appendages of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in a bid to subordinate the entire town, village and community architecture of the state to his personal whims and vainglorious caprices.
“This is dubious registration of communities association scheme is obviously a smoke screen to permanently silenced communities that have recently woken from their slumber to protest the Okowa administration’s years of neglect by mounting road blocks in order to draw attention to their plight.
“This clearly obscene scheme to hijack all the community development associations in Delta State in one fell swoop of a single operation is merely an attempt on the part of Okowa and PDP to embark on the “PDPification” of the entire town and village structures of the state while subjecting community leaders across the length and breadth of the state to a personality cult in a bid to attain the comprehensive “Okowanisation” of Delta State as a whole.”
Accordingly, the APC, Delta State, described Okowa’s plan as dead on arrival and would not see the light of day in this state.
“Something quite diabolical has taken hold of the apparatus of governance in Delta State given that this insanely ambitious gimmick to level an entire state before one man while humiliating indigenous communities throughout the state has never been attempted by any Governor or indeed, President anywhere in the entire country before.”
The APC advised the Governor to limit his plan to his own community, “If Governor Okowa is obsessed with stooping lower than he already has and, involving himself in village matters, he should confine his shenanigans to his own village.
“If, as the Governor of Delta, he has so completely run out of ideas and, must now descend into the fray of town unionism by wresting control of the various towns, villages, hamlets and communities (that his cash and carry administration has woefully failed to develop) from the elders, leaders and development committees and associations across the state, he is advised to restrict himself to his Owa-Alero enclave if his townspeople would be foolish enough to let him pollute their communal affairs as he has already poisoned the politics of Delta State.”
The Party also noted that there is nothing as potentially volatile in Delta State than community matters and, this bewilderingly idiotic scheme to appropriate each and every community across the state by the PDP is a recipe for monumental disaster.
The Party added that it was not the entitlement of any government to dissolve community development committees or town unions through legislative sophistry and legal subterfuge of registration, double registration, reregistration and reconstitution of their organs and structures, adding that what was announced was a very poorly thought-out scam to plant PDP moles in the executives of absolutely every community development association and committee in Delta State.
“Our towns and villages across our beloved state belong to the various indigenes, tribes and ethnic nationalities which make up Delta State and not to any Governor, or even Local, State or Federal Government for that matter. It is the height of executive rascality and Machiavellian excess for any Governor to be so bold, brazen, arrogant and audacious as to seek to seize our towns and villages from the good people of the state while transferring control of their various communities to a political party.”
APC used the opportunity to call on the Federal Government, National Assembly, Nigerian Police, and, Department of State Services to be on alert “as to the great danger to the fragile, hard won and very precious peace we have managed to hold together in Delta State since the onset of the present democratic dispensation.”
