I will start with what actually happened on 25 February 2023, at the official INEC collation that showed Atiku–Okowa ticket got 161,600 votes across the whole of Delta State. Bola Tinubu scored 90,183. Peter Obi took the state with 341,866. On the same day, in one senatorial district only, Ned Nwoko scored 92,514. That is not a comparison of equals, but revealing.

A first-time Senate candidate in Delta North outpolled, inside nine local governments, more than half of what the sitting governor’s presidential ticket managed across twenty-five.

Incumbency, state structure, and the vice-presidential slot did not produce a commanding personal machine. That is a record.

Nwoko also won a real three-way race: 92,514 against Labour’s 86,121 and APC’s 36,816. He carried five of the nine LGAs. That is a personal vote, not a borrowed one.

Meanwhile, as governor and running mate, he could not make Delta a PDP fortress. The state went to Obi. That fact does not disappear because the ticket later changed colour.

The political map has moved since then. Okowa left the ruling party then PDP (But APC now the ruling party) in the state, entered APC, and took the Delta North ticket after a primary whose official score was 113,309 to Nwoko’s 2,612. Nwoko rejects that result. INEC’s published list does not have him as the APC candidate. At the same time, hundreds of APC members in all nine LGAs of the district have been walking into NDC.

A party that has just absorbed a large PDP bloc and is already leaking again is not a stable vehicle. Fielding Okowa on that platform is a bet that federal incumbency and old PDP networks will outweigh a fractured local organisation. That is a risk, not a certainty.

Tinubu’s 90,183 votes in Delta in 2023 were third place. Anyone arguing that the presidency will simply “write” a Senate result in Delta North is asking voters to ignore both that score and the fact that BVAS and IReV already limited the old collation-window games.

The 2023 presidential result in Delta was ugly for the then-incumbent governor precisely because the technology made wholesale alteration harder. The same tools will be the opposition’s first line of defence again. A candidate who needs process control more than turnout is the riskier proposition.

Nwoko’s case is simpler. He has a recent, documented vote in the exact district. He has a legislative term behind him. He is not the man trying to re-enter the Senate fourteen years after leaving it, under a new party badge, while his former machine is splitting.

However, looking at who actually harvested votes in Delta North on the last comparable day, and who is now carrying the heavier organisational baggage.

If APC still choose to run Okowa. It should do so knowing the 2023 statewide presidential numbers, the 2023 Delta North Senate numbers, and the current defections. Those three facts do not say victory is possible.

They say Okowa is not the low-risk option. Nwoko, on the evidence of the last election that counted in this district, is the candidate with the clearer personal base. That is why fielding Okowa is the gamble.

-Pamela O.