Six weeks to the November 16 governorship election in Ondo State, Hakeem Gbadamosi examines the situations in the political parties vying for the state’s top job and how their candidates are campaigning for the election.
After the conclusion of the Edo State gubernatorial election which was won by the candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Monday Okpebholo, the spotlight is now on Ondo State. The train of the off-cycle election, which has left Edo and is heading towards Ondo State will not depart until the electoral process to choose a new governor for the state on Saturday, November 16, is concluded. As such, the political atmosphere is changing rapidly with contending political parties going about selling their candidates and programmes to the electorate.
Expectedly, the election will prove to be another litmus test for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to demonstrate that it is indeed capable of carrying out its constitutional mandate. There is hardly any election conducted by the INEC that is not fraught with controversies. The latest was the Edo State gubernatorial election whose conduct independent observers had decried for various reasons even while INEC had continued to maintain its innocence. Thus critical focus has usually been beamed on the electoral umpire probing its capacity to be neutral and also resist political influence by ensuring that the outcomes of elections represent the will of the voters.
But so far, the situation on ground is not without its many doubts. For instance, some residents of the state, especially youths, have expressed their reservations about the state Residents Electoral Commission (REC), Mrs. Oluwatoyin Babalola, by questioning the extent of her neutrality ahead of the governorship election. They alleged that the REC could be secretly working with some political players in the state.
The Ondo State REC, however, had repeatedly denied the allegation, stating that the commission operates an open-door policy with all political parties. According to her, “no political party has ever approached us that we have not responded to or engaged with.
“We are neutral; we do not have any candidate and we are not a political party. We carry out our duties as we are supposed to, guided by the law. Our responsibility is to ensure that everything we do is within the confines of the law.
“We follow all rules and guidelines laid down in the electoral process, and there is no favouritism towards any political party. Every political party is registered under the law and has the right to exist and engage with INEC,” Mrs Babalola had stated, dousing the fire of doubts ignited by the worried youths and other stakeholders in the state.
Shopping for Votes
In spite of the numerous doubts, the contending political parties have busied themselves shopping for votes. Already, the INEC has cleared about 17 political parties and their candidates, but out of this number, only three or four parties have been active, selling their candidates and programmes to the people. Out of this number, only two of them, APC and the main opposition, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been very active. The other less active parties in the race include the Labour Party (LP) with Chief Sola Ebiseni as the candidate; the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which produced Chief Bamidele Akingboye while the New Nigeria’s People Party (NNPP) has former NDDC commissioner, Gbenga Edema as its candidate. It must be noted that the candidates LP and SDP defected from the PDP after losing the governorship ticket to a former Deputy Governor of the state, Hon. Agboola Ajayi.
Apart from lacking the same visibility and prominence as APC and PDP, both the LP and SDP are in turmoil. While Chief Ebiseni is still struggling to authenticate his candidacy as the standard-bearer of LP, the SDP is also enmeshed in crisis following the resignation of the party’s deputy governorship candidate, Mrs. Susan Alabi. Mrs Alabi had resigned ceasing to be a member of the party.
The LP has been rocked by litigation for some time now. Only a few days ago, a Federal High Court in Abuja, had ordered INEC to recognise Ebiseni as the candidate of the party, but the leadership of LP had disavowed the judgment describing it as a joke taken too far. The leadership of the party through the Publicity Secretary, Ayo Williams, had said the party’s legal team was already reviewing the judgment and would “initiate the appeal process to ensure that justice is served. We remain committed to our principles and will not be deterred by this setback.”
On the part of SDP, it has yet to overcome the problem of finding an acceptable running mate for its candidate about six weeks to the governorship election. The choice of a suitable and acceptable running mate will, no doubt, play a major in the final outcome of the election, especially its performance..
Interestingly, political pundits in the state have narrowed the election to a battle between two former deputy governors of the late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu. Ajayi was the running mate of Akeredolu in the 2016 and his deputygovernor. But they parted ways before the 2020 election when Aiyedatiwa was picked as the late governor’s running mate.
Aiyedatiwa is currently the governor of the state and is expected to leverage on his power of incumbency to ward off threats posed by other opponents. Apart from having the financial strength to mobilise support for his victory, he now controls the political structures across the 18 local government areas, backed by strong political players in the state. This might be one of the reasons the Director General of the Aiyedatiwa Campaign Organisation, Rt. Hon Victor Olabimtan, expressed optimism that the party will win the election, saying that political machinery has been put in place to pave the way for a landslide victory for his party.
According to Olabimtan, the giant strides his party had taken to improve the state in the last seven years were enough confidence boosters. “This journey will be a repeat performance of what we did less than four years ago when the people of Ondo State filed out in their numbers to elect the late Mr Rotimi Akeredolu (Aketi) as their sixth executive governor.
“The only difference in this year’s experience is that our victory will be landslide as the people will again affirm their belief in progressive governance. This is to show you that APC as an assemblage of well-spirited Nigerians who are poised to serve the humanity has yielded positive results with several achievements recorded by the present APC administration.
“The need for us to do more and because we know that we can do more for the people is the reason why our party is confident of victory at the polls. The party’s confidence is further buoyed by the giant strides recorded in different areas of human endeavours,” Olabimtan had enthused.
But many of the political analysts in the state do not share Olabimtan’s optimism, as they have continued to list the internal wrangling in APC over the emergence of Aiyedatiwa as the party’s standard-bearer as an albatross, noting many of the aspirants who participated in the exercises are still aggrieved. In addition to this, some political onlookers think the failure of the party at the centre through President Bola Tinubu whose government has failed to fulfil its promises to turn around the country’s economy could affect the outcome of the election.
Indeed, the PDP has been leveraging on the collapsing national economy under the APC as its campaign strategy to convince the people of the state to chase the ruling party away, promising to address the economic concerns of the people, and provide a better future for residents and indigenes of the state.
Dr. Eddy Olafeso, Director General of PDP campaign group, said his party is well positioned as a viable alternative and ready to take the power from the APC. According to him, the APC has failed to fulfil the promise to solve most of the challenges confronting the nation, insisting that the ruling party has continued to give excuses for its failure.
“The people of this state are hoping for PDP; APC has failed Nigerians and people of Ondo State. There is no more time for promises. You have promised and you have failed. There is nothing to try again.
“Nigerians have realised that it is better they stay with the PDP that has the interest of Nigeria at heart than a party that gives excuses everyday. You know there are problems in Nigeria and you made promises, asking Nigerians to vote for you and for five years, nothing has changed,” he said.
But it is not known how the people of the Sunshine state will react to the campaign strategies of the contending parties or whether or not the poor performance and/or negative perception of the Tinubu government will erode support for APC in the election. The camp of the Aiyedatiwa, however, has continued to receive new entrants to support his ambition. The recent defection of former Governor Olusegun Mimiko’s foot soldiers to APC is no doubt a big blow to the PDP, though the leadership of the opposition party downplayed it, saying most of the politicians who defected to APC have been working for APC for a long period and are not regarded as members, observers still saw the development as a big harvest for the ruling party.
One remarkable feature of this campaign is that none of the candidates is cashing in on the problems and sentiments wrong zoning by any party might present. The zoning sentiment favours all the contenders in the race as they are all from the Southern senatorial district of the state. Observers note that the PDP and the APC deliberately zoned their tickets to the Ondo South not just because of balancing the state’s principle of power rotation. It is about splitting the votes from the area among the contenders, they argued.
But as things stand, Aiyedatiwa appears to be the strongest contender for the position, with many predicting him to win the election. But political analysts believe it would be a wrong calculation to underrate the PDP candidate, Ajayi given his strong political credential. The former deputy governor is regarded as one of the few grassroots mobilisers in the state. They argued that, apart from being popular, any politician who underrates Ajayi does so at his own peril.
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