— By Our Correspondent —
Hon. Yomi Asekutu, current Chairman of Warri North Local Government Area of Delta State, Nigeria is gradually drifting to make history as the worst Chairman to have ever presided over the council area. This is the view of some indigenes of the Council area who spoke exclusively to Warri Mirror magazine.
Midway into his three years term, Hon. Asekutu has demonstrated that he came into office blank and without any script or aspiration to improve the infrastructural development that was on the ground in the council area. From Koko, the headquarters of the council area to Polobubor (Tsekelewu) where the Chairman hails from, there is nothing on the ground by this administration to show that an Ijaw man was voted into office to run the council for the very first time in the 31 years Warri North has been in existence.
Expectations were that Hon. Asekutu would hit the ground running considering the pulsating clamour and agitations for an Ijaw Chairman by his Ijaw kinsmen. The Egbema Ijaws of Warri North had protested the continuous emergence of Itsekiri as council Chairman since the council was created by the Abacha administration in 1991. Even though democracy is said to be a game of numbers, the Ijaws of the council area insisted that one of their own albeit in the minority, should be elected as chairman of the council, and thereafter, the office of the chairman of the council should be rotated between the Ijaws and the majority Itsekiris. They bemoaned and rejected a second-place role that has been only next to the Itsekiris in the scheme of things in the council leadership.
The euphoria and celebrations that greeted the election of Hon. Asekutu into office as the first Chairman of Ijaw background ever to preside over the council area had died down no sooner than he had assumed office. His faux paux is his inexperience. Worse is that he claimed to know it all, and this, Warri Mirror magazine was reliably informed led to faulty policies and decisions which had culminated in his non-performance in office.
Before the election of Hon. Asekutu, the Egbema Ijaws of Warri North had alleged marginalization and balkanization by the Itsekiris who are the majority in the council area. They alleged that the latter had used the position of having more wards to retain and held on to the Chairmanship position of the council area since 1991. This jinx was broken in 2021 when it was agreed that power should shift to the Ijaws. Consequent upon which Hon. Asekutu was elected in 2021.
Further, our sources hinted that ceding the chairmanship position to the Ijaws was one bitter pill that was forced down the throats of many Itsekiris by some of their leaders who had since received backlashes and name-calling for what was considered cowardice on the part of the leaders.
In the heat of the dialogue of whether or not to allow the Ijaws to have a bite of the council’s leadership by the top brass of the Warri North chapter of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, ( PDP), two Itsekiri leaders of the above-mentioned party were publicly criticized for accepting to cede power to the Ijaws on what appeared to be very liberal terms. Not even their explanation that the decision was taken in the spirit of equity and peace could deodorise the odium of their action. Warri Mirror magazine can authoritatively report that ceding the position of Chairman to the Ijaws was done in the spirit of ubuntu as against the belief from some quarters that the Itsekiris were been browbeaten to relinquish the chairmanship position to the Ijaws.
Over time, the Ijaws of Egbema in Warri North had accused the Itsekiris of deliberately asphyxiating them politically and more especially excluding their regions in the council’s development plans. For them, the coming of Hon. Asekutu was a dream come true which would avail the incoming Chairman the opportunity to correct the anomaly and deficit in development in predominantly Ijaw areas. Alas! The opposite has been and is the case as no project worthy of mention is ongoing in the Ijaw area of the council. It was reported that the lackadaisical attitude and non-performance of Hon. Asekutu almost led to his impeachment early this year. The impeachment moves were initiated mainly by councillors from Ijaw wards with just a little support from their Itsekiri colleagues to boot out Hon. Asekutu from office for highhandedness, misappropriation of public funds and sundry misbehaviour. The Ijaw councillors felt that enough was enough and that whatever interpretation might be ascribed to their action would not stop posterity from judging their action well. To them, Hon. Asekutu was a political nightmare, a misnomer and an economic catastrophe to the Ijaws that saw his election as their turn to right whatever wrongs that were to them in the past!
One of the Councilors from the Ijaw wards who spoke to Warri Mirror on the condition of anonymity revealed that what aborted the impeachment moves was the appeal by Hon. Godwin Ebosa and Hon. Michael Diden. Both are Itsekiris, former Chairmen of the council and foremost leaders of the Warri North chapter of the PDP. Both leaders were said to have quickly waded into the matter. “We were appeased by the leaders of our party to drop the impeachment moves on Hon. Asekutu so it does not look like a plan by the Itsekiris to retake the position since the Vice Chairman, Hon. Solomon Mikie, a more competent and experienced administrator would automatically step up to occupy the Chairmanship position after removing Hon. Asekutu from the office”, he said.
Warri Mirror magazine found that the embattled Chairman had been gambling and frolicking since he resumed office as Chairman of one of the richest Local Government Areas in Delta State. He barely had the experience for the job and worse, is that he does not listen to those working with him. His highhandedness had made him cross paths severally with NULGE, the body of Warri North Local Government workers.
“These days, he seldom comes to the office and only when there is allocation to be shared,” this source who pleaded anonymity lamented. Further, the source revealed that: “All the projects embarked on by the Chairman are laughable. Rather than embark on projects that would have his name on them, the Chairman has been busy painting projects by former Chairmen. It’s not bad to maintain projects executed by out gone Chairmen. But, the problem there is dwelling long on maintaining those projects without anyone project to be pointed at as your project when your tenure had expired. Performance of council Chairmen are assessed by the projects which have their names on them, not how well they had maintained projects by their predecessors”, the source queried.
No doubt, the non-performance of Hon. Asekutu has given grave concern to some leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in the council area, especially the Ijaws who are too ashamed to talk about it. If nothing, Hon. Asekutu had made a total mess of what the Ijaws of Warri North had struggled to achieve, one of them lamented.
The private lifestyle of the Chairman who has been living in a popular Sapele hotel was also figured as contributory to his non-performance in office, and this has made it difficult to call him to order. Some of the leaders alleged that the Chairman is not focused and easily gives to the party to the detriment of his work. Besides, Hon. Asekutu is nonchalant, bellicose and unadvisable. In light of the above, the emergence of Hon. Asekutu then became an issue. How did he emerge? Politically, little or nothing was heard of Hon. Asekutu in Warri North until he was elected Chairman of the oil-rich council area in 2021. The little which was known of him and could be said about him was that he was appointed as Special Assistant to Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, the Governor of Delta State in 2018.
A source disclosed that when the coast was clear that an Ijaw man would eventually emerge as the chairman of the council area, Hon. Dio Tanga was pencilled down to become the first Ijaw man ever to be elected Chairman of Warri North. Dio’s selection was acceptable to a cross-section of Ijaw leadership that is reputed and has a say in the selection processes. Hence, Tanga, a one-time Vice Chairman of the Council was seen as a consensus candidate. The tide however turned against Dio Tanga when Dr Okowa insisted it was Hon. Yomi Asekutu or no other person. The Emperor had spoken and there was no one courageous enough to challenge him, our source stated.
On assuming office, Hon. Asekutu promised to build a befitting canteen for staff and visitors to the council. Long after the promise was made, the project is comatose and near abandonment. Sources hinted that the ceiling of the canteen for which millions of naira was budgeted and spent had caved in. No fittings, no accessories, no windows and the newly fixed doors had all broken down. It remains to be seen why such financial recklessness could be tolerated even when a council staff, Engr. Tetsola was the supervising Engineer of the project.
Warri Mirror spoke to a former Chairman of the council on the complete mess of Hon. Asekutu’s administration. The former Chairman bemoaned the situation while referring to what is presently going on in the council area as catastrophic and tragic. He said this is what happens when a leader is imposed on the people. He said that as an Itsekiri, he has little or nothing to say on the matter for fear of being misconstrued and branded as being biased and an ethnic bigot. When he was asked if he could at least put a call through or meet with the current Chairman and offer some guides to help straighten and revive the collapsing administration of Hon. Asekutu, the former Chairman declined and replied that he, Asekutu doing what he had in mind to do and advising him at this point would amount to sheer waste of time and energy.
Recently, the chairman was reported to have gone back to the site. This time, he is said to be constructing what some staff suspected would be his new office. It is not known yet why Hon. Asekutu wanted an office outside the main complex of the secretariat. The project was at a foundation stage when it was first abandoned by the administration of Hon. David Edun who proposed that the building on completion would be used as an event centre. However, time ran out on Hon. Edun and as such could not complete the project at the time he backed out of office. It remains to be seen if Hon. Asekutu would complete the project and have his name on it.
