Ondo election: A postmortem

 

The long-awaited October 10, 2020 Ondo State governorship election has been held, won and lost. The incumbent governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, better known as Aketi of the All Progressives Congress, polled 292,830 votes to defeat his main rival, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Eyitayo Jegede, who scored 195,791 votes, and Agboola Ajayi of the Zenith Labour Party, who recorded 69,127 votes. Akeredolu won outright in 15 out of the 18 local government councils. He however had the constitutionally required 25 per cent of valid vote cast in the entire 18 local government areas apart from having the highest number of votes. Though there were 17 candidates in the election, it ended up being a two-horse race, as predicted on this column last week.

Indeed, the election demystified both Ajayi and his main backer, former governor Olusegun Mimiko. Ajayi could not win his Southern Senatorial District or any local government including his own, Ese Odo. Mimiko in his hey days was called Iroko, however, despite being the national leader of the ZLP, couldn’t win the Ondo Central Senatorial District for his new protégé neither could he win his hometown of Ondo consisting of two LGAs, Ondo East and Ondo West for his party. This validated the claim by Akeredolu on ‘Good Morning Nigeria’ on the Nigerian Television Authority on Monday, October 5, that Mimiko is a spent force. Indeed, if he weren’t he would have been in the Senate as he contested the Ondo Central senatorial seat in 2019 under the ZLP and lost. Talk of 10  kings and 10 seasons. For Mimiko, the Midas’ touch is gone, such is life!

A number of factors aided Akeredolu’s victory. One is the incumbency factor. As a sitting governor with political appointees from all the 18 LGAs of the state, he has a lot of foot soldiers who could work for him for their own political survival. The reasoning is simple, if Aketi wins, they may retain their appointments, but if he loses, the collateral damage is that all of them will be sent parking from the government. As a rider to that, as an incumbent, he can point to some achievements including infrastructural development. On the contrary, all his 16 opponents only campaigned on ‘promissory notes’. Two is the effective reconciliation of all the disenchanted groups within the APC in the state, Akeredolu was able to mend fence with all the other power groups in the APC such as the Unity Forum after the party primaries. Thus, with people like Olusola Oke who contested against him under the Alliance for Democracy in 2016 and the only APC senator from Ondo State, Ajayi Boroffice working for him, victory was certain.

Third, Akeredolu’s wife, Betty, of Igbo heritage, was able to mobilise the Igbo community in Ondo for her husband. Moreover, her non-governmental organisation, Breast Cancer Association of Nigeria, which she established in 1997 after she survived breast cancer, has been helping a lot of Nigerians through awareness creation, morally and financially to overcome the dreaded disease. I am sure many of the beneficiaries of BRECAN in Ondo State mobilised support for Aketi. Fourth, the unwritten power rotation agreement in Ondo State also worked in the incumbent’s favour. He received massive support from Ondo North where he comes from and Ondo South where the power may shift to in 2024 on this basis. Apart from the fact that Aketi chose his deputy from Ondo South and that Oke is from Ondo South, the people of the southern senatorial district might have overwhelmingly supported  Akeredolu on the basis that whenever he serves out his second and final term in 2024, he would mobilise the support of Ondo North for whoever the Ondo South may endorse in 2024.

Five, the in-fighting within the PDP particularly after the waiver granted to Ajayi to defect into the party and contest the governorship ticket might have irked some of the party bigwigs. The PDP thought the deputy governor would be an asset to the party just like Godwin Obaseki was in Edo State. They didn’t know that Ondo no be Edo just like Edo no be Lagos. At the end of the day, Ajayi who was hunting for the governorship ticket soon departed the PDP to finally pitch tent with the ZLP. Even the rank of the PDP in the South-West geopolitical zone are divided hence the humiliation of former governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, during the mega rally of the party in Ondo State on Wednesday, October 7 when his cap was allegedly removed by some thugs.

Six, Akeredolu also enjoyed the support of the presidency and his brother governors. They decided to support one of their own while the President and vice president sent pre-recorded video messages and tweeted in support of Akeredolu. Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State which shares boundary with Ondo State actually charged ‘Kogites’ to vote for Akeredolu while Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos was also on the ground to give support. Seventh, accredited observer groups and journalists who covered the election actually reported a lot of vote-trading by the dominant political parties namely. Voters were reportedly induced to the tune of N7,000 per voter. This is a major dent on an otherwise successful election.

Now that Akeredolu has won his reelection bid, he must do everything to fulfil his campaign promises. The former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo once said, “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose”; this should not be the case with Aketi. A man’s words should be his bounds. To whom much is given, from him, much is expected.

The Independent National Electoral Commission has again been commended by the CSOs for another job well done in Ondo State after a sterling performance in Edo. Hearty congratulations to the commission. However, the sticky issues of late commencement of polling and malfunctioning card readers were still raised. Although the commission’s explained that the late commencement of accreditation and voting was owing to the early morning rain experienced in some parts of the state. For the malfunctioning Smart Card Readers, Registration Area Centre Technicians were rapidly mobilised for troubleshooting of the device which the commission believed is ageing.  However, INEC will need to replace all the Smart Card Readers ahead of the 2023 General Election as many of them have either been stolen, burnt by arsonists or not performing optimally again due to long use. Also, INEC will have to distribute the about 400,000 Permanent Voter Cards to Ondo State electorate as well as register fresh eligible voters who have turned 18 years since the last Continuous Voter Registration took place, not only in Ondo State but also across the country.

On the perennial challenges of vote buying and electoral violence, security agents who are deployed in their thousands must live up to expectation by ensuring that these ugly phenomena are laid to rest. I have said it on different media platforms that curbing vote buying is not rocket science. If just a fraction of the 33,000 policemen deployed to provide election security were deployed as undercover agents and carried out sting operations across the 3,009 Polling Units in Ondo, there would have been massive arrest of vote traders. Unfortunately, accredited CSOs who observed the election said the police and other security agents were nonchalant while the illegal enterprise was being perpetrated.

Ahead of Anambra 2021 governorship election, the National Assembly is enjoined to prioritise electoral reform. There have been strident calls for the establishment of the Electoral Offences Commission, the lifting of the ban on electronic voting, better inclusion of Persons with Disabilities and Women in the electoral process and other bouquet of proposals in several electoral reform bills before the National Assembly. This should be passed on time so that it does not end up like the 2018 exercise when the President refused to sign the amendment on the basis of the proposed law being passed too close to the 2019 General Election.