Hon. Michael Diden aka Ejele |
The Okpe Advocacy Group (OAG) has castigated the Centre for
Human Rights and Anti-Corruption (CHURAC) for its attack on the Chairman of the
Delta state Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (DESOPADEC) Hon. Michael
Diden, aka Ejele, and seeking to go to court to nullify his appointment.
AOG in a statement Thursday, August 22, 2019 and signed by
its National Chairman, Mr. Austin Okubor and Secretary, Comrade Efe Dafe called attention to a story
published recently in a national newspaper, in which CHURAC was said to have stated in a statement by its
Board of Trustees (BOT) Mr. Oyikedi Fuofegha that the group was going to court
to ask it to nullify the appointment Hon. Diden by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.
OAG picked holes in the claims of CHURAC to the effect that
Hon. Diden’s appointment is a negation of Section 7 (1) a, b, and c, and (2) a
and b of the DESOPADEC law 2015 as amended in 2019, arguing that Diden cannot be
validly appointed as DESOPADEC’s chairman when the governor had previously
appointed one Godwin Ebose from the same Itsekiri ethnic nationality as
DESOPADEC’s board chairman.
CHURAC was also quoted as insisting “that by virtue of
Section 15 (1), (2) a and b and (3) of the DESOPADEC law 2015 as amended, that
Governor Okowa cannot nominate for appointment any person as a member of the
governing board of DESOPADEC whose ethnic nationality produced the immediate
past board member of the same office. Therefore that an Itsekiri man cannot by
virtue of the DESOPADEC law as amended be appointed chairman after another
Itsekiri man , Godwin Ebosa was chairman of DESOPADEC in 2015. To CHURAC
therefore, Diden’s appointment “is an aberration” , arguing that “no ethnic
nationality who has produced or is producing either the chairman, the managing
director or the executive directors can succeed itself without following the
rotational circle as provided in the DESOPADEC law.”
OAG, a socio-political pressure group for the advancement of
Okpe interests, took serious exception to the statement of CHURAC saying that
it sympathized with the group for exhibiting poor understanding of issues about
Hon. Michael Diden.
OAG stated: “The
group needs to be informed that Hon. Diden is a well-rounded political figure
who is very well acknowledged by all for his good works as a person, politician
and community leader across many divides, including maternal and paternal.
“It is
therefore, important to ask CHURAC if it is wrong for a Nigerian citizen, and
specifically a Deltan, to be a product of a father and a mother of distinct
ethnic nationalities. It was expected of the so-called anti-corruption group to
have done some home work by trying to find out why the governor chose to
appoint Diden as chairman, even when he was the same governor that appointed
Godwin Ebosa as chairman in 2015.
“We believe
that if they had cared to find answers to what seem to them a puzzle, their
findings would have removed the fog and make this their journey to nowhere
unnecessary.”
Arguing
further, OAG stated: “While we will not dignify CHURAC and its shameless
sponsors by educating them on the biography of the amiable Hon. Diden, they
should be instructed that the one they are bellyaching and up in arms against
is not DESOPADEC chairman on the slot of the Itsekiri ethnic nationality, but
on the slot of the Urhobo ethnic nationality by virtue of his father being an Okpe
man. Of course, it is an obvious fact that Okpe is the core of Urhobo ethnic
nationality.
“The good
thing going for Hon. Diden is that whenever he appears in Itsekiri land or
Urhobo land, he is a son. It is this attribute of sonship in both places that
made the Itsekiri in Warri North Local Government to find him worthy, and
elected him as Council chairman, and extended same gesture to him when he was
elected again to represent them in the Delta State House of Assembly. Those
were elective positions.
“We make
bold to say that this value that his mother’s people, the Itsekiri, found in
him, that made them to consider him worthy of casting their votes for him, and
lead them at the Council as Chairman and as their representative in the House
of Assembly did not reduce the value which his father’s people in Okpe, in the
Urhobo ethnic nationality also have in him.
“This is the
reason that when the governor consulted with us as stakeholders for our consent
to appoint Diden as DESOPADEC chairman, we welcomed the idea wholeheartedly
because Diden is our son, and we cannot deny him.”
OAG
therefore, debunked CHURAC’s claims, stating: “We therefore, disprove CHURAC’s
churlish claim that the appointment of Diden as chairman of DESOPADEC board is
an aberration, and we dismiss its ranting as infantile, crude, vulgar, and a
misplaced aggression that is uncalled for.
“The
exploits and good works rendered by Diden in Warri North LGA and in the state
House of Assembly will remain indelible and will continue to rebound to his
credit as a political craftsman. And now that his father’s place requires his
services on their slot as DESOPADEC chairman, he cannot be denied.
“It is
against this background that we berate CHURAC for dabbling into what it cannot
defend; not being a stakeholder in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the
politics of the party,” OAG stated, adding: “Indeed, CHURAC’s rude and ill-bred
attack on the person of Hon. Michael Diden should be seen for what it is, the
posturing of a meddlesome interloper.
“Is the
group which claims to be a human rights body opposed to the right of Diden to
be nominated by his father’s people for appointment?”, it asked.
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