Although the odds seem to favour the incumbent, the much-awaited governorship election in Ondo State, which comes up this weekend, promises to be a titanic battle between Governor Olusegun Mimiko of the Labour Party, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of the Action Congress of Nigeria, and Olusola Oke of the Peoples Democratic Party
At last, D-day has come for the people of Ondo State to choose the man who will govern them for the next four years. After weeks of intense political fireworks, vicious campaigns, and brickbats that have upped the political temperature in the state, the coast is now clear for a battle royal that promises to be a make-or-mar affair for some of the candidates jostling for the top prize. By this weekend, the war drums reverberating in the state with disturbing echoes of violence will finally peter out, as the “Sunshine State” goes to the polls to decide who gets the much-coveted crown.
Besides the three contenders to the throne – Governor Olusegun Mimiko, Labour Party, LP; Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and Olusola Oke, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP – there are nine minion governorship candidates who have also been investing their time, energy, and resources in the electoral race that ends this weekend. They are Olusoji Ehinlanwo, Congress for Progressive Change, CPC; Oladipo Lawrence, National Conscience Party, NCP; Abikanlu Olusola, National Solidarity Democratic Party, NSDP; Victor Adetusin, Peoples for Democratic Change, PDC; Omoregha Olatunji, Progressive Peoples Alliance, PPA; Adeoti Taye, Allied Congress Party, ACP; Adeyemi Bolarinwa, All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP; Ayodele Olusegun, Better Nigeria Progressive Party, BNPP, and Omoyele Olorunwa, Change Advocacy Party, CAP.
However, going by the party spread and strength in the state, war chest, and other requisites, it is only ACN’s Akeredolu and PDP’s Oke that parade the political credentials that can upstage Governor Mimiko in a free and fair election. Interestingly, all the three titans represent the three different senatorial districts in the state, with each candidate technically banking on the home support in his senatorial district to realise his dream of occupying the Government House in Alagbaka, Akure, Ondo State capital. While Akeredolu is from the Northern Senatorial District, Mimiko and Oke hail from Central and Southern Senatorial districts, respectively. Therefore, what this means in simple political arithmetic is that any candidate that fails to corner decisive votes in his senatorial district is most likely to bid his ambition goodbye.
Expectedly, a high dose of optimism is in the air in the camps of all the three gladiators, with each candidate blowing his horn, thus preparing the ground for a political battle whose outcome may reverberate with huge consequences. Now that battle line has been drawn, each of the three contenders to the throne bragged to the magazine that victory is his. While Akeredolu boasted that he would “definitely win 65 per cent of the total votes,” Oke similarly did predict that he “is the next governor of Ondo State” if a free and fair election is conducted this weekend. It is thus apparent that the deed is cast as Governor Mimiko too boasted of a possible “moon-slide victory,” as Kayode Akinmade, his commissioner for information, put it last week. While it is true that it takes more than talking tough to win elections, no one can deny the fact that the impending electoral war has become a battle of wits for the three candidates.
Although the PDP seems popular in the Southern Senatorial District, Oke, its candidate who is also from the area, is primarily using the achievements of the last PDP-controlled administration in the state under Olusegun Agagu as campaign stringboard. Agagu, who is stoutly supporting Oke, is also from the zone, opening up the PDP standard- bearer for a possible son-of-the-soil advantage in terms of votes. Perhaps, this explains why campaign messages of the PDP were framed to create a synergy between Agagu and Oke. Throughout the campaigns, Oke has been busy wooing voters with the theme that he would resuscitate and complete all development projects in the state that have been abandoned since Agagu lost his seat through an appeal court verdict in February 2009, adding that, if elected as the state’s fifth executive governor, one of his immediate priorities would be to add and build on the projects of Agagu to make the state the envy of all.
With the look of things, many may take the PDP candidate serious because of his antecedents and the geography of his birth. Besides the fact that Oke, who is the immediate past national legal adviser of the PDP, hails from the riverine area whose votes often influence the outcome of governorship elections in the state, he is also a force to reckon with in the politics of the state. Through his stint as a member of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, and later, chairman, Ondo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, OSOPADEC, among other numerous state and federal positions he has distinguished himself, Oke is said to have built bridges within and outside the state that many of his followers say he can use to achieve his dream. There is also a huge political capital that he can reap from the national spread of PDP especially the much-talked-about federal might, if Aso Rock is willing. Whatever all this amounts to for Oke’s ambition will manifest this weekend when the voters make their choice.
Akeredolu too is unrelenting in his efforts to make Mimiko a one-term governor. For most of last week, the ACN governorship candidate was offering tantalising messages of hope, promising that the people of Ondo State will start experiencing a replica of developmental strides currently taking place in ACN-controlled states in the South-west, especially Lagos, if he is elected as governor. A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, and former national president, Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, Akeredolu will also need to win his senatorial district if his bid to serve the people of the state as their chief executive is to remain on course.
To his advantage is a huge war chest that is hard to surpass by his challengers. The brilliant lawyer, who told the magazine that he prefers to be a professional in politics instead of being a professional politician, is also backed by a formidable force of the ACN, a machinery ably led by Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State who is a national leader of the party that now controls five out of six states in the South-west. Those who should know say Akeredolu’s fortune in the coming election will be boosted by the strategic planning of foot soldiers of the ACN, assisted by the governors of Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, Oyo, and Lagos states.
However, of the three contenders to the number one seat in the state, all odds seem to favour Governor Mimiko who is seeking a second term of four years. Unlike Oke and Akeredolu, he is the only candidate in the race that is prosecuting his ambition from the point of great advantage, holding the aces of incumbency and what many discerning observers in the state regard as sterling record of performance in office. In the areas of education, health, and urban renewal interventions, Mimiko is rated by many as a colossus. On the basis of this, unlike his challengers who are busy making promises, the incumbent governor is simply asking his people to renew his mandate so that the sunshine of transformation taking place in the state under his watch can continue.
If Mimiko of the LP wins, he will be rewriting political history in a state that lives by an informal rule that forbids voting a governor twice. Even when the late Adekunle Ajasin, first executive governor of the state, retained his seat in 1983 during the days of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, the orgy of crisis that engulfed the state was part of what prompted the military to truncate the Second Republic. But if Mimiko is able to pull through the one-governor one-term albatross, he may be on his way to retaining his seat because of a number of factors.
Mimiko’s attributes as a grassroots politician that can mobilise and connect with the people may also work to tilt things in his favour. Having served twice as commissioner for health and later secretary to the state government before joining the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo as minister of housing and urban development, the incumbent governor is credited with great skills in building relationships and political bridges. He demonstrated his political wizardry when he voluntarily quit his ministerial position to contest the April 2007 election against Agagu, which he won. Of course he had to wait for 22 months before a court verdict returned his stolen mandate. However, Agagu is now challenging that court verdict, almost four years after.
With an overwhelming followership base of LP in the state, Mimiko also seems to enjoy some advantages that he can use to knock out offensives from his challengers. Up till now, his party has two out of three senators, losing one seat when Robert Boroffice dumped the LP on whose platform he clinched his seat for the ACN, besides the fact that seven out of nine House of Representatives seats are in the LP’s kitty. If all these are added to the number of LP caretaker committee chairmen in all the 18 local government areas of the state, it means the incumbent has a formidable squad of foot soldiers to spring a surprise victory come October 20.
Although some observers say the PDP poses a threat to Mimiko’s ambition, the lacklustre performance of the party in the 2011 election in the state showed that it may not be able to dislodge the LP. Some analysts have also adduced reasons Oke may not benefit much from the national machinery of the PDP. During the last presidential poll, Mimiko was said to have helped deliver Ondo State for President Goodluck Jonathan, despite the fact that the duo belong to different political parties. Therefore, those who credited Mimiko with Jonathan’s victory in the state say it is time for the President to repay a political IOU, which they say explains why the body language of the President does not suggest that he cares about who wins the election this weekend as long as it is free and fair.
In a state where many voters perceive Mimiko as the candidate that can deliver, experts say the negative nature of the campaign styles of his challengers may unwittingly help the cause of the incumbent. While the governor is wooing the voters with campaign messages that there is need for consolidating his achievements, his challengers have been inundating people who graced their rallies with vitriol and personal attacks on the incumbent. Though it is known that Nigerian politicians mount the rostrums, exchange brickbats, using inciting and provocative words and make unguarded statements that often fly in the face of logic, watchers of political tides say opposition campaign styles in Ondo State are in bad taste – as exemplified by the campaigns of attrition that now rent the air ahead of October 20.
Two weeks ago, when Tinubu led campaign rallies of his party across some cities and towns in the state, he called Mimiko an ingrate and a betrayer, instead of using the opportunity to sell the candidature of Akeredolu. “I assisted Mimiko to retrieve his mandate in 2009. Four years ago, he came to me in tears. Mimiko came with two of my brothers, rolling on the ground. He begged us to rescue him. I gave Mimiko money and everything that he needed to fight the battle. We took his case overseas. The white people collected money from us. Do you think white men will do anything for free? But he is now saying that we did nothing for him. When he was afraid to come to Ondo State, we gave him a bullet-proof car,” Tinubu said at Ikare-Akoko, Ondo State. But, last week in Ondo town where he hails from, Mimiko denied all the allegations, saying he had never betrayed anyone in his life.
Even when some top leaders of Afenifere, pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, endorsed Mimiko’s second term bid, Bisi Akande, national chairman, ACN, also threw caution and cultural etiquettes to the wind, describing them as political jobbers. Yet, Reuben Fasoranti, leader of Afenifere, Olu Falae, former presidential candidate of Alliance for Democracy, AD, and Ayo Adebanjo are his elders. “The three of them are glorious political beggars who have lost relevance in the nation’s politics. The so-called leaders are only looking for what they will eat. Of what relevance are they? They cannot point to any individual as their followers even in their home state. Falae, for instance, has always brought bad luck to any political party he belongs to. Fasoranti on his own was the man who single-handedly ruined theAfenifere, and Ayo Adebanjo has never contested (in) any election in his life. We don’t pray to have such politicians in the ACN because we don’t want bad luck in our party,” 73-year-old Akande said.
All this may add to the rain of endorsement Mimiko has enjoyed in the camps of organised groups in the state such as artisans, labour, transport unions and traditional rulers, among others, who have openly embraced his re-election bid. Also, in a recent opinion survey conducted by Gallop, Mimiko, with 77 per cent of a weeklong poll, is tipped by respondents as the favourite to govern the state in the next four years. If things turn in favour of Mimiko this weekend, his victory will be endowing Tunde Bakare, fiery cleric and convener of the Save Nigeria Group with attributes of prescience. Bakare, CPC vice-presidential candidate in the April 2011 general elections recently predicted that Mimiko is the candidate that will sing the victory song. As things stood last week, the Iroko that is Mimiko may end up dwarfing other trees. Via TELL Magazine
No comments:
Post a Comment