We would have ignored Senator Ede Dafinone’s latest outburst, but since he chose the inauguration of the Delta APC Campaign Council to announce his new job title as the man assigned to “retire all the wizards in Delta Central,” we feel obliged to put his comedy in proper perspective.
Frankly, Dafinone is beginning to look like a joke taken too far.
His entire political story can be told in one line: he got what he never worked for. In 2023, when real party men were on the ground building structures, funding the APC and battling the PDP with their own resources, Dafinone was nowhere near the trenches. He was in his air-conditioned office waiting for a call. That call eventually came, and it was Senator Ovie Omo-Agege who, as party leader, magnanimously handed him the Delta Central ticket without any serious contest.
That is Dafinone’s CV. No primary fight, no structure, no street credibility. Just a gifted ticket.
And now, almost three and a half years into a tenure that has been a textbook example of absentee representation, the same beneficiary is on a podium saying he will retire the wizards. Which wizards exactly? Is it the same Omo-Agege who made his senatorship possible? Is it the leaders who built the APC in Delta from scratch while he was missing in action?
It is pure ingratitude. Shameless betrayal.
Let’s assess this self-styled wizard-hunter. In almost three and a half years, what has Delta Central felt from his being in the Senate? Where is the federal presence? Where is that loud, fearless voice for the Urhobo nation that Omo-Agege gave us for eight years? What bill has he passed? What landmark project has he attracted? Where is the real empowerment that reaches the grassroots?
The answer is simple – nothing. He has reduced one of the most powerful Senate seats in Nigeria, once the office of the Deputy President of the Senate, to a mere attendance sheet. He signs in Abuja, sneaks around Delta Central for social events and photo-ops, and disappears.
If there is any wizard here, it is Dafinone himself – the wizard of vanishing. He vanishes from legislative debates, vanishes from his constituency, vanishes from the fight for Urhobo relevance. The only place he never vanishes is in front of a camera for meet-and-greet.
Dafinone needs to understand that Delta Central is not a family business where a Senate seat is passed around like company shares. This is the heart of the Urhobo nation, with politically enlightened people who know who is working and who is just wearing agbada.
You cannot retire Omo-Agege. You can’t even retire his shadow. Omo-Agege rose to become the number five man in this country through strategy, grit and popular support. Dafinone got to the Senate by riding on his back and now hopes to return on the back of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori. The difference is clear.
So let the self-appointed retirer continue his comedy tour. But he should be reminded that 2027 is around the corner. And when it comes, the people of Delta Central will organize a proper retirement party. Not for wizards, but for political tourists, for ingrates, for betrayers, for benchwarmers who mistook a rare privilege for personal strength.
When that retirement comes, it will be total and it will be humiliating.
Delta Central does not need a man who retires wizards. It needs a real Senator.
Signed:
Godwin Anaughe