By Moses Darah
Critical thinkers, historians, and realists may not need a prophet, fortune teller, or sports pundit to correctly predict the likely scorelines of the 2023 elections in Delta State. It is obvious, even to the blind and all enthusiasts, that the ruling party and defending champion in the state, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will successfully defend and retain its gold medals. The newly promoted visiting teams like the All Progressives Congress (APC), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Labour Party (LP) will go trophyless in the 2023 season.
Let’s use verifiable data to highlight some of the factors that will sustain the PDP’s winning streak at the presidential, senatorial, governorship, federal representative, and state representative elections. PDP has been the dominant party since 1999, winning almost all the available “trophies” with over 80% ball possession, excellent goalkeeping (with most clean sheets), good defense (supporting the attack), the best midfielders in the world of political sports with accurate passes, and quality strikers with remarkable scoring runs.
In the 2019 Delta State gubernatorial election, held on March 9, the PDP won the election convincingly by defeating the APC and 48 other minor parties that participated in the governorship competition. PDP scored 925,274 votes, winning in 23 LGA’s, representing 80.17 percent, while APC won the other two of the state’s 25 LGAs with 709,336 votes, representing only 18.71 percent.
Since 2019, nothing innovative has really happened in the camps of the opposition. The current situation is partly captured in my recent article, “APC’s Bad Roads in Delta State.” So, apart from the few aggrieved PDP members loaned or permanently transferred for free and other few stomach infrastructure seekers, there are no quality players with the required stamina and fitness to outplay the PDP in the Champions League (Presidential), Europa League (Senatorial), Barclay Premiership (Governorship), FA Cup (Representatives), and Carling Cup (Assembly) in the APC FC and other minor parties.
Conclusively, the free transfer of the 2019 APC team captain to APGA FC without adequate replacement has further weakened the deceptive party with multiple unfulfilled promises. APC and other minor political parties will show little resistance to the PDP’s quest to continue its dominance and excellently defend all its titles. We hope that after the election, PDP will not give starting shirts to would-be new signings for juicy appointments, to the detriment of its diehard players and fans.
