Rotimi Fasan
Contrary to the end-time predictions of fake cabalists and aspiring soothsayers masquerading as political pundits, the governorship election in Edo State was essentially violence-free. But for a pocket of incidents that resulted in the disruption of the electoral process, reports of the election were mostly favourable.
Voter-turnout was very low with just over 500,000 ballots cast of the 2.5 million registered voters across nearly two dozen political parties. Clearly, most voters chose to stay back at home rather than take the risk of being maimed or suffer worse fate in an election that the outgoing governor, Godwin Obaseki, had characterised as a do-or-die affair.
Or it’s, perhaps, about time we started taking a second look at the often-touted number of voters in the bloated registers of political parties. In this age of technology with security safeguards, the tendency to inflate voters’ registers with fictitious names of Nigerians and foreigners as our political parties were known to do might have been drastically curtailed. Nigerians increasingly have good reasons not to vote than they have to vote.
It was difficult separating fact from fiction and mere rabble-rousing in the accusations the PDP levelled against INEC and the Police as the Governor assumed a belligerent and uncompromising stance. It had to be his way or nothing else. Despite his strong aversion to the APC, Obaseki, like many of his current followers, was a former member of that party and served his first term as governor under the umbrella of the party. As a serving governor, however, it wouldn’t be too much to expect a degree of circumspection on his part. But he had no guardrails as far as his activities in Edo were concerned. A raging bull in a china shop, Obaseki answered to himself only and in that mood went into the election.
Projected as a three-horse race between the PDP, APC and Labour Party candidates, the election turned out a contest simply between the PDP and the APC. This should have been clear from elections that have been held across the country since February 2023. That the LP was added as a top dog to the race was the mere wishful thinking of those still blinkered by the sentiment that a third force which they see in the image of the LP is required to break the hold, now a stranglehold, that the PDP and the APC exercise over the political landscape.
In that same mood of nostalgia, some Nigerians pushed the idea that the LP can repeat the feat it performed during the presidential election of 2023. The result of the election in Edo and Osun before that should have told them that LP as a party probably now has his best years behind it. Under the stranglehold of its so-called Obedient segment, it may also have outlived its perennial usefulness as a special purpose vehicle. With the fight for the soul of the party taking a critical dimension between the Julius Abure and Peter Obi/Alex Otti strains of the party (without mentioning the Lamidi Apapa/Joe Ajaero elements), the vultures may have started to gather over LP. Let’s not forget also that the geo-ethnic arrangement in Edo State for a shift from the south and north to the centre didn’t favour its candidate, Olumide Akpata. There was no magic to be spawned by the LP acolytes in Edo. Not even the loud-mouthed Aisha Yesufu could turn in the votes. She garnered just four votes in her polling unit.
LP as usual has its online presence well and alive. Its candidate was even projected to win (Olumide Akpata and their online supporters actually fell for this lie) by television and online influencers-turned emergency pollsters like Rufai Oseni and Tunde Ednut. They conducted online polls! Isn’t it time that the party gets out of its bubble and starts living in the real world? The smooth-talking Asue Ighodalo, with the bullish support of Obaseki, was expected to win by many. He made the rounds of the media houses, beat the streets and took to the stage as often as he was called upon. He looked the part and seemed to have the resume and experience as a former back-of-the-room technocrat to the likes of President Bola Tinubu to go with it. For some media houses, the election was his to lose. His sound credentials were effaced by the aggressive posture of Obaseki who called the tune and paid the piper. He took on both real and imagined enemies within and outside the PDP, the State and Abuja. He recruited a legion of lieutenants who chorused his mantra of Edo No Be Lagos in their self-described battle between ‘people’ and federal might.
He got the minority nine legislators loyal to him to oust 15 others in the dead of the night. He slammed a lawsuit on the revered monarch of the Edo, jostled with him over custodial rights over looted artefacts that were returned by their European pilferers. On the eve of the election, he re-ignited the war between the Edo Palace and the Igbinedions by paying the Igbinedion patriarch the kind of tribute reserved for the Oba.
Obaseki has set fire to the legacy of his godfather and benefactor in Edo politics and appeared to have triumphed. He had a huge appetite for trouble which he courted without let or hindrance. He had become an Nyesom Wike-type which probably explains why, in a sudden access of hubris, he marched to the results collating centre in the small hours of the morning in a last-ditch attempt to turn back the wheel of fortune that had suddenly swirled against him. This trip, like his speech accepting the defeat of his candidate, was a face-saving gesture to deflect blame for their defeat. At the final count of votes the following morning his candidate had been trounced with nearly 50, 000 votes.
The winner was the effacing, soft-spoken Monday Okpebholo, a senator of the Nigerian state. Not exactly an orator( who is among our politicians?) but certainly not the stark illiterate he had been made out to be by his opponents. Both before and after, this election was more of a proxy war, a muscle flexing, between Obaseki and Oshiomhole.
Obaseki championed the candidacy of Asue Ighodalo and in the end, he cost him the election. Ighodalo was probably a good product advertised and vended by a poor salesman. In the end and despite all claims of vote/voter manipulation, there has so far been no smoking gun. And contrary to the claims of President Bola Tinubu, this election responded to the internal dynamics of Edo politics. It is not an endorsement of the current economic policies and political realities of Nigeria under the APC.
Vanguard
