The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo State conducted its governorship primary two Saturdays ago and made a mess of it. It was ironically the much maligned and supposedly divided and demoralised opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that conducted a more democratic, far fairer, and more inspiring primary. It is, however, too early to speculate whether the APC by its levity and incompetence will win the November governorship election, or whether the PDP can translate its orderliness and fair play into electoral victory seven months down the line. The PDP, using indirect primary method, elected by a compelling margin Agboola Ajayi, a former deputy governor to the late Rotimi Akeredolu, as its standard-bearer. On the other side of the aisle, incumbent APC governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa seized the governorship ticket by all means possible and will be hoisting his party’s flag in November. If he wins, it will simply be due to the same political dynamics that undeservedly gave him the ticket: incumbency, patronage, ruthlessness, and a shambolic APC organisation unperturbed by principles and morality.
Mr Aiyedatiwa took the ticket by an unbridgeable margin that saw him outscoring his closest competitors combined. He was scored 48,569 votes. He will hope that in November those votes, assuming they all turn out and are added to those of his competitors to give a total of some 89,613 votes, would gift him an unassailable lead right from the outset. It usually doesn’t work out that way, but it helps to recall that in the 2020 governorship poll, Mr Akeredolu won with a vote tally of 292,830 out of 572,745 valid votes cast. The remaining votes were cast in favour of Eyitayo Jegede (195,791, PDP) and Agboola Ajayi (97,039, Zenith Labour Party), both of whom are now in the PDP. In November, the PDP will hope that discontent in the ruling party will be strong and relentless enough to swing the pendulum in favour of the opposition. But the APC expects that the incumbency factor and the control of the federal administration might convince the voters to hold the fort. The expectation of an electoral fait accompli in November might have led the APC in the state into organising probably one of the worst primary elections the state has ever known.
Everything indicated right from the beginning that the APC would make a hash of its primary. Firstly, there was the Mr Aiyedatiwa factor himself. Destitute of principles and sound judgement, and given completely to opening his mouth and putting his foot into it repeatedly, he was decidedly unkeen on ensuring fair play. A number of factors explain his predilection for realpolitik. One is that he knew he was seen as an outsider, and two is that he was, in addition, unable to trust even his own judgement in picking fights, most of them needless. But he desperately wanted to win every fight, whether he chose the fight or the fight chose him. So far, as his first name suggests, he has been lucky in winning even the unlikeliest of battles. Not too long after he was picked as deputy governor, his benefactor fell ill, and despite his churlishness and atrocious disregard for human feelings, his calculations that Mr Akeredolu would die before the APC would need to pick a standard-bearer were accurate. Ensconced in the State House thereafter, nothing he has said or done has prevented jobholders and vote herders from swarming around him. In such circumstances, fair or unfair, a primary election victory was a foregone conclusion.
Secondly, since the forced exit of Adams Oshiomhole as national chairman, the APC has been poorly and controversially led. Discipline has been maintained with extreme difficulty. In fact, in most cases, there has been no regard for discipline at all. The current chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje, is a little lethargic and hobbled by enemies back in Kano, his home state, who are snapping at his heels. They will not give him rest. He may be somewhat an intellectual and a little didactic, but he seems curiously unable to bring those talents to bear on a huge, combative and ideological party which had just managed to retain the federal administration against the run of play. The party has smothered internal rage fairly successfully, but it is, however, unable to placate the ethnic and ideological divisions simmering below the surface. Worse, not been quite as disciplined and ethical as the party demands and probably deserves, Dr Ganduje has been unable to give what he does not have, and was perhaps chary of imposing any kind of order and finesse upon Ondo APC whose leader, Mr Aiyedatiwa, may be the most unaware of APC governors in the Southwest, if not the country.
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Thirdly, by the strangest and most bizarre of party administration actions, the national APC appointed Kogi State governor Usman Ododo as head of the primary election committee. But Mr Ododo is a rookie governor shackled by legal disputes and weighed down by the troubles of his predecessor, the importuning Yahaya Bello. The restless governor has not shown that he knows much of anything, and has so far not settled down long enough for anyone, let alone himself, to develop the administrative or ideological confidence that is an imperative for sound judgement and governance. To worsen a bad choice, Mr Ododo arrived in Akure, Ondo State, on the Saturday morning of the primary election. What could he do in hours before the poll? But unfazed by the complexity of managing a direct primary election, and unused to party members having and exercising real choices, he probably assumed that since party primary was a family and internal affair, it really didn’t matter whether it was done as spectacularly inept as the one Mr Bello deployed in foisting him on Kogi APC. Could Dr Ganduje pretend not to know these limitations?
Unfortunately, days after the abysmal APC primary, and months after the party nearly botched the Edo State APC governorship primary, Dr Ganduje has met with party stakeholders to stitch a new cloth on an old garment. He appealed for unity and asked them to rally behind Mr Aiyedatiwa so that APC would retain Ondo. It helps the Bola Tinubu administration for the APC to retain control of Ondo, because it takes a whole lot of scheming, funding and organising to win new states. But if the party knew this, should they not have tried to organise a great primary which the governor would have probably won anyway? Now they want peace anchored on both unfairness and grave injury to the soul and fabric of the party. They have given the party a bad and appalling name, ignoring the fact that if the cheated party members rebuff their pleadings, it could spell disaster in November. They cannot pretend not to know the consequences of their action; they simply don’t care about the consequences of allotting votes as their whims dictated.
The vacillating Dr Ganduje may be the party’s national chairman, and the contumelious Mr Aiyedatiwa the state’s party leader, but President Tinubu is the APC national leader. The president must, therefore, consider that these infractions and machinations were done in his name, for which he bears ultimate responsibility. He must ask himself what kind of party he wants to lead and bequeath to future generations: one led by Dr Ganduje and which produces governors who have nothing substantial to teach or give, or one which he as president inspires into embracing the tenets of democracy and greatness, a disciplined party that demonstrates utmost fidelity to the law and constitution. There is no room to straddle. The last Ondo APC primary was irredeemably fraudulent. It should be redone.
