Who wins Ondo's ten-ten twenty-twenty governorship election?

 

The die is cast! The Ondo State governorship election scheduled for October 10, 2020 remains 72 hours away. Who will be the next occupant of Alagbaka Government House in Akure? Will Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu popularly known as Aketi be able to retain his seat or will any of the other 16 contestants be able to dislodge him? Will the Independent National Electoral Commission be able to outperform its Edo State best of September 19, 2020? Will there be better voter turnout in Ondo than the less than 26 per cent voter turnout in Edo?

A brief history of the state will suffice here. Ondo State, nicknamed the “Sunshine State”, was created from the defunct Western Region on February 3, 1976. It originally included what is now Ekiti State, which was carved out in 1996. Ondo State occupies a land area of about 15,500km² (6,000sq. ml) with a population of 3,441,924 people according to the 2006 census. The state has 18 Local Government Areas with each of the three senatorial districts having six apiece, with Akure as the capital city. It has eight House of Representatives seats and 26 state House of Assembly positions and 203 Wards and 3,009 Polling Units. It also has 1,822,346 Registered Voters. However, on Saturday, only 1,478,460 out of these voters who have collected their Permanent Voter Cards are expected to vote in the governorship 17 political parties fielded candidates. Unfortunately, out of the whole lot, only one of them is a female.

Ondo State is one of the seven states that have off-cycle, off-season governorship elections in Nigeria. This happened as a result of the judicial intervention on the 2007 governorship election petition between Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, then of the Labour Party and Dr. Olusegun Agagu, then of the Peoples Democratic Party. Mimiko triumphed over Agagu at the Court of Appeal in 2008 hence the change in the cycle in terms of governorship election in Ondo State.

On February 6, 2020, INEC announced the date for the election and subsequently released the timetable and schedule of activities. Some of the activities that have so far held include party primaries and nomination of candidates, campaigns which will end on Thursday, procurement of election materials (sensitive and non-sensitive), recruitment and training of ad-hoc staff that will conduct the election, voter education, activation of Inter Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security, stakeholder  meetings, signing of peace accord by the 17 candidates in the governorship election,  accreditation of party agents, journalists and civil society election observer groups, political debate for selected candidates as well as training and deployment of security officials.

Unfortunately, INEC could not conduct voter registration and distribution of Permanent Voter Cards ahead of the poll due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, part of activities INEC had to do was to issue fresh election guidelines and voting procedures which will make the electorate to be in full compliance with COVID-19 safety protocols. For instance, voters are to maintain physical distancing and wear face masks before they can be allowed to vote. INEC officials are also going to be kitted in Personal Protective gear while there will be use of hand sanitisers for both voters and election officials. It is shocking to note that political parties and candidates in Ondo conducted their campaign in strict defiance of COVID-19 safety protocols. The All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party are guiltiest of this.

On Monday, October 5, 2020, I was a guest analyst on “Good Morning Nigeria”, a news and current affairs programme on the Nigerian Television Authority to discuss the forthcoming governorship election in Ondo State. Other panelists were Governor Akeredolu and Dr. Ismail Bello of Baze University, Abuja.  One of the questions I was asked was the comparism between Edo and Ondo states. Interestingly, the two states share a lot in common. They are contiguous states sharing boundaries, cultural affinity and both have 18 LGAs, some of them being riverine areas. The APC is the ruling party in both states until July this year when Governor Godwin Obaseki defected to the PDP after being screened out by the APC. They are both oil-producing states although Edo is in the South-South geopolitical zone while Ondo is in the South-West zone. Both states also have off-cycle governorship elections.

Though there are 17 candidates in the Ondo election, it is largely a three-horse race. The real contenders are Governor Akeredolu, the APC candidate, the PDP’s Eyitayo Jegede and Zenith Labour’s candidate who incidentally is the incumbent Deputy Governor, Agboola Ajayi. Interestingly, the three of them are lawyers with Akeredolu and Jegede being Senior Advocates of Nigeria. Akeredolu and Jegede have also served as former Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General of Ondo State and are also meeting in the electoral field for the second consecutive time having first vied against each other in 2016 on their different party platforms. Ajayi is a former Councillor, Local Government Chairman, member of the House of Representatives and now, Deputy Governor with the backing of former governor Olusegun Mimiko. He is therefore not a political Lilliputian. Besides, the three political gladiators are from the three senatorial districts of the state. Aketi is from the North, Jegede from the Central while Ajayi is from the South.

Should Akeredolu win his reelection bid on Saturday, he will be the second person to achieve that feat in Ondo State since it was created in 1976.  The first being Mimiko who served from 2008 to 2016. Ahead of the poll, there have been concerns over a number of things. The first was the unfortunate fire which gutted parts of INEC office on Thursday, September 10, 2020. The inferno destroyed 5,141 Smart Card Readers. Luckily, INEC said it had mobilised SCRs from adjoining states to replace the burnt ones and is ready for the conduct of the poll. Two, there have been worrisome cases of electoral violence in the state with most of the clashes being between the supporters of the APC and the PDP. The campaigns of the two dominant political parties have been spiced with incendiary comments, hate speech and fake news.

Akeredolu has been criticised by some of his political opponents. Allegations against him range from non-performance, ‘Owo-nisation’ of Ondo government, mismanagement of funds meant for Ondo State Oil Mineral Producing Communities, and others. Aketi has debunked these allegations asking his traducers to come forward with incontrovertible evidences.

The governor says he sees the October 10 election as a referendum on his last three and a half years in office. He claims to have done well given the paucity of funds at his disposal. He also highlighted his major achievements in road construction, creation of an industrial park which has attracted several companies to the state, getting accreditation for about 15 courses for the state’s University of Medicine, renovation and building of schools as well as ability to raise the state’s Internally Generated Revenue from about N600m to over N2bn.

Do the masses of Ondo State believe Akeredolu’s sterling performance story? Do they believe his political opponents who said he is a failure? Only the electorate can pass a verdict on Aketi and they have a golden opportunity to do that on 10/10/2020. I enjoin them to go out en-masse to cast their ballots in an orderly manner and in full compliance with COVID-19 safety protocols. They should shun violence and vote-buying and follow through the outcome of the poll via INEC’s new Result Viewing Portal. It is as sure as death that the APC needs a victory in Ondo State badly to shore up its waning electoral influence, more so as the party is still smarting from the loss of Edo. However, the party must not indulge in underhand tactics to win the election. Anyone planning to rig next Saturday’s poll should remember what happened in Ondo State in 1983 between Chief Adekunle Ajasin and Chief Akin Omoboriowo as the people revolted when the election was rigged for Omoboriowo  thereby precipitating the political crisis that sounded the death knell of the Second Republic.