The highest socio-cultural umbrella body of the Urhobo Nation, the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), has described the call for the Deputy President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, to resign, both as a Senator and Deputy President of the Senate, as a reprehensible grand scheme to further rape and deprive the country’s fifth largest Nationality of her rightful place in the National Scheme.
In a statement issued by the Office of the UPU President-General, Olorogun Moses Oghenerume Taiga, the UPU, while describing the allegation against Senator Ovie Omo-Agege as most obnoxious, odious, repugnant and devilishly wicked, said that those calling for Senator Omo-Agege’s resignation are enemies of the “Live and Let Live” basics of democracy, which include fair hearing, due process, based on irrefutable facts. The Statement declared that, “for avoidance of doubts, the UPU has never supported criminality or immorality in the polity. Therefore, ordinarily, if there was any iota of substance in their call for his resignation, the Urhobo Nation would have been boxed into a tight corner, but would still have stood firmly and stoutly for moral rectitude. Rather, the call, by the group, lacks the slightest whiff of believable scent.
“The UPU is well briefed that this odious matter has long been disposed of in the earliest days of Senator Omo-Agege’s entry onto the Political arena. Our Senator has been going to the United States of America, before he became a Senator, and even recently, as his family partly resides there. Even, as we speak, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege’s Californian Law License is very much active.
“On the issue of the forcible seizure of the Mace of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Omo-Agege was exonerated of any complicity by an Abuja High Court sitting in Bwari.”
The Statement called on all those who feel Omo-Agege has a case to answer to go to court, “instead of this undemocratic resort to mudslinging and nuisance to the public peace.”
The Statement urged the Civil Society Coalition, threatening to mobilise a noisome coterie of those they would be misinforming against our Senator, to have a rethink.
The UPU said that the role and position of the Urhobo Nation in the Nigerian Project, not only in size, but even more critically in her economic wellbeing, dictates that her rights be fully recognised, and upheld, such that no frivolous group should lightly contemplate depriving her of her rightful place in such a critical chamber of Policy-making, as the Senate. It declared that the Urhobos are constitutionally and legally, as well rich enough in numbers to also, mobilise her own people to counter any form assault on her rights.
The Statement also put the entire Urhobo Nation on the alert, reminding all that this is the all-time highest position any of their nationality has ever held. It states that “it behoves all Urhobo persons the need to be vigilant and watch one of theirs being casually and callously rubbished.”
The UPU Statement also urged all Urhobo leaders in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, “to sheathe every sword, put their house in order, and end internal wrangling that embolden others to feel free to hatch such schemes to put down such a great nationality as the Urhobo Nation.”
