HE Delta Central senatorial bye-election, initially fixed for this weekend, but now postponed to Saturday, October 12, to fill the vacant position created by the unexpected death of Senator Pius Ewherido, means different things to the political parties currently jostling to enthrone their candidates in the chiefly Urhobo senatorial district of Delta state.
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Until his death on June 30, the last occupant of the seat, late Ewherido, a former acting speaker and deputy speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, was the only Democratic Peoples Party, DPP, senator.
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His victory in the 2011 general elections was a protest against his former party, the ruling People's Democratic Party, PDP, which he felt, underestimated or did not adequately compensate him after the primaries that saw Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan emerge as the gubernatorial candidate for the PDP in 2007 gubernatorial elections.
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Though, Governor Uduaghan, a personal friend of the deceased visited him in his country home and did everything to resolve the ill feelings, it still did not stop Ewherido from decamping to the DPP.
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But they remained friends and Uduaghan, who was among those making arrangement to fly him abroad for further treatment, was by his bedside at the National Hospital, Abuja, where he died.