No matter the partisan fealty, ethnic grandstanding or media posturing, the Anambra gubernatorial polls of 2013 did not pass the muster of a clean poll.
However the courts decide the case, Willy Obiano, the declared winner, is not about to play Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua: clutching his controversial prize, if he wins at the courts, but conceding his victory is near-fatally tainted. That would be too stiff an admission for the nasty realpolitik that propelled Mr. Obiano.
Still, there is gripping moral from vote fiddling — and Mr. Obiano need not look far: Governor Peter Obi, his benefactor and former Governor Chris Ngige, his electoral rival.
Indeed, the contrast between Mr. Obi and Dr. Ngige is stark, bordering on the dramatic. From the stigma of a court-nullified poll, former Governor Ngige emerged the face of sane governance in Awka, a fresh liberating force from the ruthless clamp of Anambra election fixers.
It was the political equivalent of a Saul turned Paul, so much so that Ngige’s gubernatorial exploits provided him the spur to romp to senatorial victory a few years later.
On the other hand, Governor Obi, acclaimed beneficiary of a court-reclaimed mandate, should have been an uncompromising ambassador of clean polls. But his unabashed association with the abjectly flawed Anambra 2014 vote — that was the near-unanimous verdict of poll observers — may well be the electoral equivalent of a Paul turned Saul!
Still, in Nigeria’s polity of convenience, ideals might indeed be desirable, but what rules the roost is crass expediency. So, it is with Governor Obi, proud prince of electoral rectitude unfazed by electoral turpitude, and Mr. Obiano, his protégé!
But let no one think Anambra 2013 was a one-off accident or debacle; particularly with Prof. Attahiru Jega, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chair, entering his usual post-debacle default setting of piping INEC would use lessons learnt to improve on future polls. If you believe that, you probably would believe anything!
Indeed, Anambra 2013 was a dress rehearsal for Ekiti/Osun 2014, just as Ondo 2012 prepared the grounds for the Anambra manipulation. Any wonder then that like Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, in Ondo, Dr. Ngige, the major opposition candidate in Anambra came third, not second, at the polls?
The parallels are just too stark to ignore! The constant, of course, is an ultra-desperate Jonathan Presidency.
In Anambra, the win of Obi’s protégé was absolutely strategic for Jonathan’s lifeline in the 2015 sweepstakes, even if Obi is an All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) member, and a PDP candidate was in the race.
In Ekiti/Osun gubernatorial polls 2014, Governor Olusegun Mimiko, another Jonathan ally, would labour (every pun intended!) to deliver for presidential protégés (Labour candidate in Ekiti and PDP candidate in Osun), to return an earlier presidential favour; and gift himself life after two gubernatorial terms.
Again, with a crumbling PDP, such foothold in the South West would give the troubled president a bounce in his desperation to remain president post-2015 — at all cost, if necessary. Again, it is no coincidence that Mimiko belongs, not to PDP, but to Labour.
Labour! At best a platform of convenience, at worst a platform of perfidy, and in-between a platform of vacuity, Mimiko’s LP has perhaps the worst brand equity in Nigeria’s troubled democratic polity.
Both party and leader perfectly fit each other though, for Mimiko’s opponents would swear — and not without good reasons — that he is unrepentant master of the political self, in which serial perfidy is a ready political tool.
Still, Jonathan’s impunity-powered political manoeuvring and Mimiko’s predictable perfidy would not have mattered much, if the South West progressives-in-government had not manifested, yet again, that penchant to self-destroy. The Ekiti/Osun elections ought to have been a breeze, given the admirable toil of the sitting governments. Yet, they are condemned to toiling hard for victory, especially in Ekiti. Should Ekiti fall, the spectre of an illicit “bandwagon” is real.
In Osun, the Ogbeni-Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, has his own challenges; and the opposition strategy would be to drum up the religious divides, insisting the Mullah of their malevolent imagination was bent on some Islamist agenda; and calling the other side to electoral arms.
But it is doubtful if the gambit would work. For one, the governor works hard and hollers even louder about it. For another the projects are so groundbreaking even the sensory-challenged can feel them, not to talk of citizens endowed with full faculties. Besides, whatever Osun PDP would offer, with balance of forces on ground, are likely to be no more than lambs led to the electoral slaughter.
Then, the governor mobilises, mobilises and mobilises, starting with incessant fixing of the infrastructure of the mind, apart from touching grassroots flesh with his monthly walk-for-life manoeuvres. He calls it health walks. But old Action Group (AG) veterans could well call it “Gbogbo Igba, E stand by” — “On the ready, always” in straight English! Those who claim “federal might” would try, but Osun may well be a suicide mission for any electoral hanky-panky!
Ekiti, unfortunately, would appear less clear cut. And The Punch solid interviews with Governor Kayode Fayemi (7 December 2013) and budding challenger, Opeyemi Bamidele (28 December 2013), underscore the quagmire: why is Ekiti so blest that the ruling party there had to invent credible electoral opponents where there was none?
Beyond demonisation and lionisation, the bastion of the emotive, Mr. Bamidele could have played for painful patience, thus playing Pericles, the wise Greek who endured forced banishment to later trump his foes to become the greatest Athenian lawgiver ever. By defecting to Labour however, he appears to have played Coriolanus, the rash Roman, who allowed his traducers to push him into fatal enemy embrace, and ended in abject ruin.
Should Mr. Bamidele fail, he faces possible political destruction. Should he win, he would engineer a further South West progressive fissure, the nemesis of sane governance and sustainable development in the region. Either is no flattering epigram to a promising political career.
But the Fayemi gubernatorial court is no less indicted in this sorry pass. For tact, they embraced swashbuckling spin and media demonisation, bordering on wilful denial. For clinical thinking, they embraced emotive grandstanding that worsened the conflict. Now, those hawks in Fayemi’s court have to walk their talk!
Again, deja vu, ala 2003: gifting the Ekiti opposition life they don’t deserve! The definitive difference though, is that whereas the South West Gubernatorial Class of 1999-2003 were perceived to have generally underperformed, the present breed are perceived general high performers.
The Ekiti electorate would probably be loath to waste their vote for another Fayose-era paralysis. But you can bet the opposing column to give it their best shot, cook the vote and claim illicit victory from the Ekiti progressives’ “civil war”!
If that spectre is real, then the Ekiti warriors have not learnt from history. That is a big shame.
Even then, before any desperado blunders into skewing the vote: in the South West, electoral robbers always pay hefty prices!
