From: Paul Osuyi, Assba

The remains of the member of the Board of Trustees of the All Progressive Congress (APC), late Senator Francis Spanner Okpozo, was, on Thursday, laid-in-state at the floor of the Delta State House of Assembly in Asaba where a valedictory session was held in his honour.

Okpozo, a second republic senator was a former deputy Speaker of the defunct Bendel State House of Assembly.

The APC chieftain, who hailed from Ozoro in Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State, died in December last year at the age of 84.

His remains, contained an horse blood casket, was conveyed from Benin, Edo State in a white ambulance marked ‘Another World Limited Funeral Undertakers,’ and it berthed at the House of Assembly complex along Okpanam Road, Asaba at exactly 11.30am.

The valedictory session was jointly presided over by the Speaker of the House, Mr. Monday Igbuya and his counterpart from Edo State, Mr. Justin Okonoboh.

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In his funeral oration, Mr. Igbuya described Okpozo as a “consummate politician, a consistent critic and commentator with the strategic aim of settling stormy issues and developing the Niger Delta region.”

Igbuya stressed that Okpozo was “committed to peace in the Niger Delta region, development of the Isoko nation and the entrenchment of democratic tenets among his people.

 

“Let us keep alive the principles of love and tolerance by which the former chairman, senate committee on environment lived. Let us continue to repudiate the politics of extremism, political intolerance and acts of institutional and class injustice.

“Okpozo has fought the good fight. I bid our great leader a long be fond farewell even as flights of angels lead him to eternal rest,” Igbuya concluded.