Former Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege has accused Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori of disregarding a directive by President Bola Tinubu to integrate old and new APC members through a 60-40 sharing arrangement when the governor defected from the Peoples Democratic Party, saying the failure to implement the arrangement forced long-standing party members who had worked for Tinubu’s 2023 victory out of the party structure.

Omo-Agege, who has since moved from the APC to the Nigeria Democratic Congress, made the assertion in a television interview where he also declared full support for NDC presidential candidate Peter Obi ahead of the 2027 elections. He said the directive to share party structures between old and new members was implemented in almost every other state in the country but was ignored in Delta, where Oborevwori’s camp took complete control upon joining the APC and effectively displaced those who had built the party’s grassroots presence.

He said he was responding to an interview in which the governor described him as untrustworthy and politically weightless, dismissing those characterisations as evidence that Oborevwori felt threatened by his continuing political relevance and grassroots support. He said the governor’s decision to leave the PDP for the APC was itself partly motivated by fear of facing him in a 2027 governorship contest.

Omo-Agege claimed to have won the APC governorship primary, alleging that his supporters secured victory in 84 of the state’s 85 wards and amassed over 109,000 votes, but that the result was not properly recorded by a panel appointed by forces loyal to the governor.

Having joined the NDC, he pledged total loyalty to the party and formally endorsed Peter Obi’s presidential bid, drawing a parallel with his previous support for Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu while in the APC. He also disclosed that he had won the NDC’s senatorial primary for Delta Central Senatorial District and was waiting for the party to formally announce the result.