The results of Saturday’s governorship and state Houses of Assembly polls are a mixed grill in different parts of the country. In the South West, but for the exception of Oyo State where the exercise was marred by violence and the killing of a member of the National Assembly, the polls in other states appeared generally peaceful. Their outcome also largely reflected the sentiments of the electorate. In Lagos State, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Babajide Sanwoolu, put up a strong performance, defeating his closest rival, Jimi Agbaje of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), with 739,445 votes against 206,141.
The result of the election says many things about the preferences and sentiments of the majority of voters in the nation’s commercial nerve centre. It put paid to the impression that was created following the narrow margin with which the APC beat PDP in the February 23 presidential/National Assembly polls, that Lagos was up for grabs by the PDP, but for the skirmishes at a few polling units and the destruction of ballots at some polling units in Okota area of the state. The outcome of that election, which the APC won by a mere 130,000 or so votes, had suggested that with a little more effort, the PDP could seize the state from the APC on account of an imaginary overwhelming disenchantment with the APC National Leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
But, the resounding victory of APC last Saturday proved otherwise. It rested, at least for this electoral season, the myth of PDP’s imminent takeover of Lagos. Contrary to PDP’s Jimi Agbaje’s claim that he lost because his supporters were intimidated into deciding not to vote, it is glaring that not even a repeat of his party’s 448, 016 score in the February 23 election could have won it the governorship of the state. Going forward, the threat to the unity of the different ethnic groups in Lagos State in pursuit of electoral glory is uncalled for. It is important for Lagos residents to continue to live in peace and unity to ensure the continued development of the state.
In Ogun State, all the permutations on Governor Amosun’s invincibility and his expected “singlehanded” installation of a governor after formally working against the candidate of his own party, the APC, came to naught, as his candidate was roundly defeated by APC’s Dapo Abiodun. His shellacked adopted candidate and party only woke up to start crying wolf many hours after INEC announced the final result of the poll, in an apparent face-saving measure. The lesson for Amosun, and indeed, for Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, who also worked against the candidate of his own APC, is that it is unwise and unprofitable to work against the candidate of one’s party. Such a decision can only breed electoral disaster as happened in Imo where Okorocha’s stance cost his APC the governorship of the state. Chukwuemeka Ihedioha, a PDP former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, rode on the wings of Okorocha’s intransigence to clinch the governorship of the state.
In Oyo State, the APC reaped the whirlwind of the people’s glaring disenchantment with Governor Ajimobi who has, over the years, angered various segments of society in the state and had constituted himself into a “Constituted Authority”, who could not be corrected. His intransigence cost his party, the APC, the governorship of the state, even as he had earlier lost his bid to win a senatorial seat in the February 23 poll. His stubbornness and APC’s failure to keep him on track in his relationship with the electorate in the state, made the governorship contest a walkover for the candidate of the rival PDP, Seyi Makinde. Last minute efforts by the APC National Leader, Bola Tinubu, to strike an alliance with former governor, Alao Akala, who has great following in the Ogbomosho area of the state, came too late. Apparently, the APC leader, in pursuit of other election issues, had taken his eyes off the ball in his own backyard and had apparently underrated the massive disenchantment with Ajimobi, which could not be redressed in the dying days of the electoral contest.
Oyo State is, however, one of the states that experienced electoral violence occasioning death; with reports and rumours of death sending chills down the spines of its residents during the exercise. A member of the House of Representatives, Temitope Olatoye (aka Sugar), representing Lagelu/Akinyele constituency, was shot in the head on his way back to Ibadan after voting in his village, and by 7.45 pm on that day, he was pronounced dead. There were many other instances of violence in other states, with the loss of many lives. However, an unfortunate development in the election is the high number of states in which elections have been declared inconclusive. As I write, the elections have been declared inconclusive in Adamawa, Sokoto, Bauchi and Plateau, sometimes because the number of cancelled votes is higher than the margin between the winner and the runner up. This is the same principle that INEC relied on in the recent Osun State governorship election which was declared inconclusive when the margin of votes between the leading PDP and the runner up APC was lower than the number of cancelled votes.
A by-election in the areas where the votes were cancelled in the Osun poll eventually gave the APC the victory when the party forged an alliance with Mr. Iyiola Omisore of another party to win the PDP in the race. This, indeed, is an aspect of our electoral laws that has the tendency to create suspicion of bias by the electoral agency and needs a closer look to see if it ought to be retained, reformed or completely jettisoned. This is more so as the states where the governorship elections were declared inconclusive were mostly states in which the opposition party, the PDP, appeared to be heading for victory. Apart from the inconclusive elections, the poll results were suspended, outright, in some states, including Rivers, where hordes of uniformed men reportedly took over the collation centre and were rejecting result sheets from some polling units. The involvement of so many military men in the Rivers election is anathema to democracy. It should not have happened. There were also suspensions in Kano and Taraba.
One problem that has once again been brought to the fore in this election circle is the rabid desperation with which electoral contests are fought. Elections are guided by the law and should ordinarily be a way of choosing leaders at certain levels of governance but in Nigeria, they are more of warfare because public office is largely seen as an avenue for raiding the public purse, instead of a gateway to serving the people. Political leaders have made electoral contsts a do-or-die affair with their efforts to obtain power by all means, fair or foul, in order to remain financially okay and relevant in their communities where poverty of minds and pockets of large swathes of the population makes them look up to political office holders among them for succour. Booming guns, arson, extra-judicial killings and kidnapping should have no place in our polls. The turning of our elections into wars is condemnable.
Another critical issue in this election season is the high number of cancelled votes. If it is not carefully addressed in our subsequent elections, it has the capacity to derail the entire electoral process and destroy the credibility of our democracy. INEC and the other relevant authorities should rise up and speedily address these issues to maintain the integrity of our elections. The suspended/inconclusive elections should also be quickly resolved to bring a closure to this year’s general election, so that the task of governance can begin in earnest.