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Tag: Dissecting

  • Drilling rig as vessel: Dissecting the Transocean, Seadrill cases

    Olisa Agbakoba Legal Maritime Unit Head Dr Oluwole Akinyeye examines two verdicts on whether a drilling rig is a vessel under the Cabotage Act.

    The Court of Appeal in the recent Judg-ment of Transocean Support Services Nigeria Limited & 3 Ors v Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency & 1 Or: Appeal No: CA/L/ 503/2016, held that drilling rigs cannot be deemed to be vessels for the purpose of the Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act, 2003 and liable to the two per cent surcharge as stipulated in the Cabotage Act.

    In arriving at its decision, the Court of Appeal gave consideration to the provisions of the Cabotage Act and held that either both or one of two conditions had to be met in order for a drilling rig to be classified as a vessel under the Cabotage Act.

    The first condition is that in order for a drilling rig to be deemed as a vessel eligible for registration under the Cabotage Act, it was crucial to show thatthe rig was designed, used or capable of being used solely or partly for marine navigation and used for the carriage on, through or under water of persons or property without regard to method or lack of propulsion.

    The second condition is that a drilling rig could be classified as a vessel under the Cabotage Act, if it is shown that the rig was listed among the machineries expressly identified as vessels in the Act.

    It is crucial to note that the Court of Appeal expressly stated that either both or one of these two conditions are necessary to make a drilling rig a vessel under the Cabotage Act.

    The Respondents in Transocean failed to show that the drilling rig in contention satisfied any of the two conditions identified by the Court of Appeal.

    As a result, the Court of Appeal held that a drilling rig could not be classified as a vessel under the Cabotage Act and further held that the listing of drilling rigs under the head of foreign vessels in the Guidelines on Implementation of Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act 2003, Revised 2007, was beyond the powers of the Minister of Transport.

    At first blush, the Court of Appeal’s decision would appear to have overturned the judgment delivered in the recent Federal High Court case of Seadrill Mobile Units Nigeria Limited v The Honourable Minister for Transportation & 2 Ors, however, this is not so.

    In Seadrill, it was held that the drilling rig in contention was a vessel under the Cabotage Act because it satisfied one of the conditions identified by the Court of Appealin Transocean, which is that the rig must be capable of being used for marine navigation and for the carriage of property and persons.

    This is different from the position in Transocean where the Respondents failed to establish that a drilling rig satisfied any of the two conditions laid down by the Court of Appeal for the purpose of classifying the rig as vessel under the Cabotage Act. This clearly reflects that the decision in Seadrill is distinguishable from the decision in Transocean.

    From the above, the effect of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Transocean isthat a drilling rig could be considered as a vessel under the Act, if it satisfied the condition that it is capable of being used for marine navigation and for the carriage of property and personswithout regard to method or lack of propulsion, irrespective that the drilling rig is not expressly listed as a vessel under the Cabotage Act.

    Given this position, there is the likelihood that there could be more cases seeking determination of whether a particular drilling rig is a vessel under the Cabotage Act, which will be decided on a case by case basis.

    In light of this position, it would appear that the final word is yet to be heard regarding the controversial matter of whether a drilling rig is a vessel under the Cabotage Act.

  • Dissecting Nigeria’s federal structure

    Dissecting Nigeria’s federal structure

    A recent public lecture organised by the Yoruba Tennis Club under the theme ‘Federalism: Myth or Reality – The Nigerian Experience’ brought together scholars, elder statesmen, traditional rulers and many Nigerians that are worried about the way the country has been drifting in recent times. Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI was at the event. 

    After decrying the weak foundation on which the Nigerian federal system of government is built and the relationship between the centre and the so-called federating units, a one-time Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Dr. Kole Abayomi, has called for fundamental changes in the constitution, to make the county the ideal federation envisaged by its founding fathers.

    Abayomi who made the remark in a public lecture he delivered at the Yoruba Tennis Club, Lagos, recently said his ideal concept of federalism is one where the power of centre and the federating units are equal and coordinate, with certain functions such as foreign affairs, security and currency surrounded to the former.

    He said: “Power must be shared in such a manner, so as not to make the units weak and the centre too powerful. Nigeria practices a unitary system of government disguised as federalism and most of the states are not viable.”

    In the preamble to the lecture titled Federalism: Myth or Reality – The Nigerian Experience, the former Director-General said at independence in 1960 the country had three regions that were working very well. He said the defunct Midwest State was created to satisfy the clamour for minority interest.

    He added: “Today, Nigeria has 36 states and most of them are not viable economically and financially; they depend on the support of the Federal Government. They go cap in hands every month, begging for funds. That to me is an insult in federalism. It is understandable if the Federal Government steps in when you have a natural disaster, but what is obtainable today is that the states virtually depend on the centre to survive.”

    Abayomi said it is unfortunate that many states cannot pay salaries today and the Federal Government had to step in, by giving them bailouts. From this arrangement, he said the country is gradually moving from a federal system of government to a unitary system.

    Abayomidiscussed three provisions of the constitution extensively: the Presidential System of Government, Federal Character and presidential appointments. He confessed that though elder statesman, Alhaji Femi Okunnu, and himself were members of the committee that recommended the presidential system to the country prior to the Second Republic, but he is fed up with it.

    He said: “The Westminster model is still the best. A revert to this system of government will do us some do; it is less expensive. Alhaji Okunnu and I ignorantly supported the change from the parliamentary system to the presidential system. We adopted a foreign phenomenon without understanding what made it work in America. To me, the system is very expensive and festers corruption, because there are many more mouths to seal.”

    The lecturer said the principle of Federal Character was introduced as a laudable idea to make appointments balanced, to assist states that are backward. He said in some cases, it has become an instrument of promoting nepotism. “Though very laudable, the principle of Federal Character is not justiciable, because there are other provisions that are not consistent with it,” he added.

    On appointments, Dr. Abayomi said the constitution empowers the President to appoint principal officers of his kitchen cabinet as he deems fit. He said President Muhammadu Buhari probably appointed almost all members of his security team from a particular ethnic group, because of the issue of trust.

    He said it is unfortunate that people first identify themselves as belonging to their ethnic groups, regions and religions, before seeing themselves as Nigerians.

    The legal luminary also frowned at a situation where people from certain states are giving quit notices to Nigerians from other parts of the country to vacate their states or face the consequences, saying in an ideal federal set up, people are free to live and work in any part of the country they wish. He said because of tribal and religious sentiments, life is no longer safe in Nigeria.

    He said until Nigerians awakened national zeal and national consciousness, by emphasizing those things that unite them, rather than the ones that divide them, they will not realize the change they desire. His words: “We must develop a culture of nationalism; without that, no other change can carry us anywhere. We must never admit that anybody from anywhere is superior to us. Nigerians should be free to live in any part of the country. We must insert these principles in our constitution.”

    Abayomi advocated for devolution of powers, saying the current 36-state structure is uinwieldy and wrong. He said: “I would advocate for devolution of powers to the states. The six geo-political zones should be used as federating units. During the First Republic, the regions had powers and such powers were used to develop various parts of the country.

    “There should be fiscal and economic restructuring; the current system is retrogressive. But would the political elite who are feeding fat from the current system allow us to effect the change?”

    Two discussants made contributions on the subject, after Dr. Abayomi’s presentation. They are: former Federal Permanent Secretary, Dr. Olayiwola Ogunbambi, and legal practitioner and public affairs analyst, Mr. Dele Farotimi. Ogunbambi said: “The problem is not about devolution of powers, but the fact of the matter is that the states are too many, too unwieldy and unviable, to be able to compete with the Federal Government. This is coupled with the escalating cost of governance.”

    The former Permanent Secretary said the states are not the federating units, because for convenience the military merely created centres of command, in consonance with their traditional command structure. He added: “To qualify to be called federating units presupposes that they have existed independently on their own, like the Greek City States, before the emergence of the federation.”

    Ogunbambi said as a first step towards going back true federalism, Nigerians must create a people’s constitution. He said the National Assembly would be compounding the problem, if lawmakers believe that with their periodic constitutional amendments of the 1999 Constitution that they are helping matters.

    He added: “Our lawmakers are too selfish, too myopic and too fixated on the 2019 general elections to give Nigerians a constitution that would address the issues on ground. I don’t know whether the narrative about restructuring is the path to progress. We must revisit the whole concept of constitution making.”

    Before he started his contribution, Farotimi apologized to the elders in the audience, because he was going to say may not go down well with them. He said Nigeria was built on a quicksand and that there are a lot of dreamers who continue to believe in a country that is designed to fail.

    His words: “We have a lot of dreamers in Nigeria. My father’s generation built the country on lies. When we talk at this stage whether Nigeria is a federal state or not, we are not being realistic. The Federal Republic of Nigeria died in 1966. The second coup of 1966 destroyed Nigeria.”

    He said though the young idealists who executed the first coup committed a grave error when they assassinated leading politicians in the defunct Northern and the Western Region, but it was the second coup that destroyed the foundation on which the country built.

    The legal practitioner said today Nigeria is a country with multiple levels of citizenship, as a result of the second coup. He added: “Every system operates on a design and it produces what it is programmed to produce, which in this case is corruption.”

    Farotimi who was also a former student union leader said before independence some wisemen came together and agreed a federal structure and a parliamentary system of government was best suited for the country. But decades of military rule, he said, destroyed everything.

    He believes that the hegemony of those that have kept Nigeria down is coming to an end, with events that are being witnessed in the country in recent times. He added: “Whether we like it or not, at some point, we are going to be forced to have the discussion that we have been running away from.”

    In his remarks, the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo, who was the special guest of honour, commended the Yoruba Tennis Club. He said the club is concerned about Nigeria’s progress and that it should not relent.

    The monarch said Federal Character is good, “but it should not be at the expense of people’s safety and security.” He said even though the country wants to achieve equality of states, there should be fiscal federalism, so that all states can develop at their own pace.

    On his part, Alhaji Okunnu, who was the moderator, argued that Nigeria’s federalism died in 1979, when a new constitution institutionalized the unitary system that was introduced by the military. He said the 1979 Constitution spoke from two sides of the mouth on local government, by making it a federal matter, under the guise of giving it autonomy.

  • Dissecting Prof. Olayinka, new Ui Vc

    Dissecting Prof. Olayinka, new Ui Vc

    The recent smooth leadership transition at the Nigeria’s premier university-University of Ibadan- clearly indicates that the level of political maturity among the academics , particularly in the institution is not only commendable, but serves as a big lesson to the political class. 13 distinguished and eminent professors engaged in a fierce battle to occupy the coveted position that will be vacant on 1 December, 2015. The five-year single tenure of the incumbent, Prof. Isaac Folorunso Adewole runs out on 30 November, this year.

    The selection process which began a couple of months ago was indeed tough and tedious. But, with transparency and honesty of purpose on the part of the Dr. Umaru Musa Mustapha- led governing council, a winner emerged at the end of the rigorous exercise without acrimony.

    Since the announcement of the new vice-chancellor, there has been peace and jubilation. Nobody threatens to go to court. None of the contestants  is writing petition. They gallantly conceded defeat in order to preserve the system. Nothing illustrates political maturity more than this gallantry in thrashing . They should be commended for not heating up the system in pursuance of their ambition.

    In the same vein, Dr.Mustapha and his team should be applauded for organising a credible and transparent system that produced Prof. Adewole’s successor. With this feat, UI has lived up to expectation as the first and best university in the country. The university is not only providing academic leadership to other higher institutions in the country, Ibadan is equally leading politically as there has not been a serious  crisis over appointment of vice chancellor, which is always tempestuous in many other places.

    But then, who is the winner of Ibadan contest? He is Prof. Abel Idowu Olayinka of Faculty of Science, Geology department. Born at Odo-Ijesa, Osun State on 16th February 1958, Prof. Olayinka attended St. Bartholomew’s Primary School, Odo-Ijesa, from  1964 to 1969 and was appointed the senior prefect in his final year as a result of his brilliance and exceptional performance. He was admitted into the famous Ilesa Grammar School in January 1970 and completed his West Africa Secondary School Certificate in 1975, in Division one. He entered the University of Ibadan in 1977/1978 to study geology and graduated with a Bachelor of Science (B.sc) degree (2nd class Honours, Upper Division) in 1981, and he was the best graduating student in his class.

    He proceeded to the United Kingdom for postgraduate studies in September 1983, first at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London. He earned an MSc degree in Geophysics of the University of London and Diploma of Membership of Imperial College in July 1984. He subsequently received the Overseas Research Students’ Award from the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of United Kingdom Universities (now Universities UK); he utilised this scholarship at the University of Birmingham for his Ph.D. research in Applied Geophysics which he completed in April, 1988.

    Prof. Olayinka had postdoctoral research experience in Germany, first at Technical University, Braunschweig as a German Academic Exchange Service Visiting Scholar from April till August 1996 and later at Technical University, Berlin, as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow from July 1997 till April 1999.

    However, beyond sparkling academic attainments, the question remains: who exactly is Prof. Olayinka? Does he have what it takes to lead UI? Is he capable of taking UI to the next level? Is he popular among his peers?. These are some of the questions this writer attempts to answer. With extensive search and research into his background, using some common investigative tools, including content analysis, observation and interview, the subject of investigation clearly comes across as an effective and efficient manager of men and materials who has positively impacted lives in the course of his career trajectory. Using his social media platforms to analyse what his admirers are saying about him, Prof. Olayinka is indeed an embodiment of gentility, an epitome of simplicity, very unassuming, brilliant and kind to all and sundry.

    As soon as he was unveiled as the 12th VC of Ibadan,  his network of acquaintances, ex-students, admirers and friends, cutting across the strata of the society and regions bombarded his Facebook and twitter accounts, fulsome in their tributes to a placid man of extra ordinary mental acuity. His two mobile sets literally collapsed following massiness of messages and calls. Going through some of the messages, One is convinced that Prof. Olayinka is not only popular but generally perceived to be suited for the job. A senior lecturer in the Department of Communication and Language Arts, Dr. Olusola Oyewo described Prof. Olayinka as a chivalrous and courteous personality who treasures friendship and association. According to Dr.Oyewo “Prof. Olayinka is a great leader. He never forgets to send me birthday messages every year even without prompting. He is good for the job”. A non-teaching senior staff, Mr. Olumuyiwa Olusegun Soyanwo echoed the same sentiment, painting the new VC as an admirable and unruffled scholar-administrator. Mr. Soyanwo said, “He is never under pressure, because he does his work strategically. When offices close by 4pm, you will see Prof. Olayinka driving back to the office in his personal car and works till 10pm. I am sure that UI is lucky again to have his like as the new VC”

    However, it could be observed that his naturally restrained physiognomy is much antithetical to his robust sense of humour, just as his laconic response to greetings largely betrays his reverential and deferential  dispositions to people. Engage him in phatic communication, by saying “good morning sir”, his response will be “Ah!,e pele” meaning well done. So short, almost curtly, yet he is harmless.  But when you meet him cracking jokes, you will never believe it is the same Prof. Olayinka who had just answered you as if you were his enemy. It is his nature. He is a man of few words with a large heart.

    Prof. Olayinka’s popularity began to soar on campus in 2002 when he became the Dean of Post Graduate School. He displayed outstanding resourcefulness, foresight and dogged determination as he repositioned the school as the flagship of post graduate training in sub-saharan Africa. He used his fund-raising skill to ensure massive fund mobilization with 253 percent increase in total revenue generated.

    Again, Prof. Olayinka and his team introduced overseas conference grants for Post graduate teachers after a nearly 20-year period of inactivity of such a scheme in the university. The UI PG school scholarship scheme is also to his credit, just as the UI PG School Teaching and Research Assistantship scheme was the product of his imagination.

    When he was the Head of Department, and later the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) , his sterling qualities kept propelling the machinery of administration to the extent that those who saw  his capacity foretold his ascension to the current position.

    He says he will envision, lead and facilitate principled, transparent and participatory governance. It is therefore expected that every stakeholder will give him support to excel. As it is often been said by the outgoing VC, Prof. Adewole “anybody who is privileged to be the VC is not the best, the brightest and the most intelligent, such a person is just the luckiest among the best, therefore as prof. Olayinka takes over on 1 December, 2015, it is expected that all other best and the brightest in the community will support him to move the university to greater heights. Prof. Adewole has done so well. He has exceeded public expectation in performance , Prof. Olayinka must work harder to be adjudged better than his predecessor .

    Prof. Olayinka is happily married to an elegant Dr. Eyiwumi Bolutito Olayinka. The union is blessed with children.

    • Saanu is with the Directorate of Public Communication, University of Ibadan.

    Email: sundaysaanu@yahoo.com

     

  • Dissecting Nigerian Elections

    Basil Jide Fadipe is an indigene of Ile-Ife, the ancient town that occupies a pride of place in Nigerian history. I grew up there, so also are many other prominent Nigerians who are today, playing in the big league in the media and other human endeavours. That was where the late journalism icon, Dele Giwa, who changed the face of journalism practice in Nigeria, was weaned. Others have since followed suit: Dele Momodu, Dele Omotunde, Dare Babarinsa, Dele Olojede, Gbenga Adefaye, among others.

    Basil, as he is popularly known, taught me General Science in the secondary school. He is a professor and a surgeon. His scholarship and surgical breakthroughs have earned him accolades, rewards and recognitions all over the world. He is the founder/CEO of Justin Fadipe Centre, a flourishing, groundbreaking medical facility in the West Indies. He regularly churns out highly incontrovertible opinions on any subject under the sun. In this piece, reproduced here, Basil describes ‘Nigerian elections as a Season of Grains’. Read on:

    “It is the peculiar universality of his themes that has welded my heart to the man since that moment in 1980, when I first came across a book of his (“Human Knowledge”) as I wandered aimlessly,  a newly minted graduate, into a bookshop in the northern part of Nigeria. Ever since, I have never been able to shift my heart even an inch. Other than the four gospels, where comparable universality of themes, can be found, I have come across no thinker the size of Bertrand Russell; not before or since him.  And if I thought highly enough of (a) visitor(s), he could never leave Justin Fadipe Centre  without a stop at the little  ’shrine’ I mounted  for Bertrand Russell,  where, from the nature of the volumes, it should be obvious  Bertrand Russell, though long dead, weighs heavier dead than alive.

    “In 1950, when this Professor of Mathematics was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, (yes literature!!!), here was the citation: “In recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought”. And when he came to give his speech as he received his award, here goes Bertrand Russell: “In any democracy, at what level of starvation will a citizen accept a bag of grains for his vote?” Since I listened to that speech few years ago, I lost hope in the intrincisity of democracy as an autonomous force. It is, like many tame-able forces, a merely contingent one,  shaped by the quality of its tamers. Democracy could be a lion, but one always at the mercy of hunger.

    “Give hunger a room, the lion is de-felinated, reduced, but to own caricature. Politics, as a democratic tool, gets blunted by the ‘rust’ of  wants, self or selves,  outmoding the polity or collective. Citizens who see the rust not the tool…keep a safe distance,  ….see the tool, not the rust… seek its  handle  and those who see tool as much as it’s  blight of rust  ….shelter in the clouds,  sporting for the right moment. Democracy in the end has no teeth intrinsic to it other than that granted by coalescence of self interests. Stumbling across such (spontaneous) coalescence, however,  is so often like stumbling across a toothed chicken. Competition, more than coalescence, more define the turf, one viscious interest pitted against another.

    “If democracy is so vulnerable to starvation, why pander to democracy and not starvation. When the dirt poor starves  from lack of means, Russellian logic about what a bag of grains may do to his vote is obvious but what happens when it is  the rich (or … the not-poor) facing starvation… its own kin. Dig a little down and it soon becomes obvious starvation leads both the poor and the rich to trading votes for a bag of grains. The dirt poor starves for means, the rich for contentment and the super rich for security. Subtract the combined population of these different categories of starvers from the whole, and see what flimsy residuum is left of a nation (any) to save democracy from the crippling effects of starvation.  The non-starving have learnt to be content with meeting basic needs, unmoved by desire for wants and more wants. They lie in the extremes of the bell curve, too few and too peripheral to swing democracy in the right direction; the advancement of individuals through  advancement, not exploitation of the nation

    “Yet if any, it is from within the ranks of the non-starvers, that  selfless calculations capable of moving a nation forward can be located .The dirt poor starving for food waits at the door, vote in hand  seeking the  highest bidder. The rich but uncontented, starving for more of everything,  or for contracts or position or loans, or grants or scholarship for kids, or any number of other wants, not needs, standing on one side of the road, beckoning democracy  for his kind of grains, too ready to do any dance  to seduce dividends. The poor trades vote for grains already in hand, delivered days before,  the rich trades on credit, the grains to follow a favourable outcome.  Trading on credit has risks, a risk minimized by conspiratorial alliance with the poor.

    “He seduces the poor into an expedient alliance with yet more bags of grain to bloat his stomach and cloud his judgement. It is this pre-electoral conspiracy between the poor who starve for needs and the rich who starve for wants that reduces Aristotelian democracy to a mockery. The non-starvers, too few to be anything,  but featherweight, sit at one end of the political seesaw,  pitted against the conspiratorial weight sat at the other end of the poor and the rich. In the asymmetry, the featherweight is lobbed into a cloud he could hardly see his path and the election delivered by unholy alliance into the waiting hands of the highest bidders in the ring.

    “The poor for reason of needs, has little loyalty to anything other than the sanctity of self. Inside his need perimeters, issues of national drift,  an unaffordable and reckless luxury,  loom little, if at all. The rich, slave to uncontentedness and driven by wants, is too self consumed to think nation; he thinks self preservation and self perpetuation. Between the two, democracy becomes a manequin garbed in make believe colours. If there is to be hope for democracy, it is neither the poor, nor the rich, to seek, it is the middle class. The middle class, if it be true to value, is less dependent on handouts or hand in, able always to know the fine line between loyalty to party and loyalty to state. He invests his intellect on state driven agendas, little, if at all, on party driven parodies.

    “Governance, not partisanship, is his constant focus.  Democracy needs him more than he needs democracy.  But the only reliable path to middle class is quality education; it shifts up the totem pole. Current Nigeria still has too little of middle class to steer democracy out of murky waters.  The country is bottom heavy with the poor and top loaded with the rich; but to the credit of successive governments, education has remained a priority with expanding opportunities home and abroad,  to educate Nigerians. There is now hardly a state in the country without a tertiary centre and hardly a part of the world. Nigerians are not engaged in some form of formal education. In time, a coalescence of these human resources must count for something in growing a critical mass of middle class that can cause democracy to be less beholden to  starvation. The seekers of votes still benefit from starvation as a collateral tool to garner votes, but so numbered are the days that the next generation of politicians will encounter steeper climbs should they hope on business as usual.

    “For now and until that critical mass of middle class emerges, the winners of elections in Nigeria today will remain the winners in the past; those with bigger  bags of grains. Jonathan or Buhari, the contest will be decided on grains not ringside rhetorics; bigger trucks of grains and correct addresses. This is today’s predicament, hopefully, not tomorrow’s realities.

    Russell implied it all in 1950.”

  • Dissecting figures from Osun poll

    Dissecting figures from Osun poll

    One week after the all-important governorship election in Osun State, the tension it generated has sufficiently cooled down to allow a sober look at the result. While the All Progressives Congress candidate, the incumbent Governor Rauf Aregbesola, polled 394,684 votes, his main challenger, Iyiola Omisore, obtained 292,431 votes. By the result, the governor was empowered to continue in office for another four years. The APC faithful have been celebrating since, while the Peoples Democratic Party that fielded Omisore could not believe that the federal might could ever fail to deliver as it did on August 9.

    But, through the figures, the people of Osun said a lot that have not been reported. Let me first declare here that I am not looking beyond the figures. This is not to say that there is no truth in the contention that a lot might have gone wrong.

    First, the general principles. Aregbesola won in 22 local government areas, while Omisore made the mark in eight. Both candidates made more than the mandatory 25 per cent in the 30 local government areas and, by that, the spread factor counted for nothing. In every election, candidates usually have their strongholds. Aregbesola’s were Ilesa East and West LGAs, Osogbo and Olorunda, as well as Irewole and Olaoluwa. Being evenly distributed among the three Senatorial districts, it was a vindication of the pre-election APC claim to state-wide popularity.

    On the other hand, Ife Central, South and East LGAs rallied round their son, Omisore. Outside the three, the PDP standard bearer failed to make sufficient impact elsewhere. In my view, a candidate could claim anywhere he records two-thirds of the votes as his stronghold. But, a candidate could record clear victory in an area where it led his main opponent with more than 20 per cent of the votes, but below the two-third mark. The APC thus had clear victory in  Irepodun, Ifelodun, Ede South, Obokun, Egbedore, Ila, Ejigbo, Boripe and Atakumosa East. The PDP did not record such a feat outside the Ife enclave.

    The marginal fields where neither party recorded up to 10 per cent lead over the other were Boluwaduro, Ifedayo, Odo Otin, Orolu, Oriade, Atakumosa West, Ife North, Ayedire, Isokan Ayedaade and Ede North. Of particular note are Ayedire where the PDP led with only 89 votes, Boluwaduro where the party led with a meager 144 and Ifedayo where it won with 243 votes. In reality, these are, therefore swing LGAs.

    Further, the results show that Omisore polled 73,038 votes in the four Ife LGAs, about double APC’s 39,419. The PDP candidate’s Ife votes represent about 25 per cent of the total votes for the party. Similarly, the APC candidate recorded 71,477 of the 113,106 votes from the six Ijesa LGAs. Both candidates recorded more than 35 per cent of the votes cast in the stronghold of the other.

    The import of the electorate’s decision is that the people of Osun are not particularly averse to any party or candidate and ideological stance may not count for much in elections held in the state in the near future, particularly next year.

    It might be wrong to come to the conclusion that the 2015 elections would follow similar pattern in the 30 LGAs. First, variables could have changed, especially as determinants of voting pattern in local, state and presidential elections are never the same.

    However, it means that the candidates for the various offices would play major roles in determining voter behaviour. Where identification with parties and ideology is very strong, choice of candidates might not count for much, but in a state where the people do not care much about that factor; it might be the most important factor.

    Second, the part played by some defectors from the PDP to the APC just before the election could have contributed to the spread of the party’s vote. This implies that the party needs stability of its structure to hold on to the lever of power. How it manages the primaries to pick candidates for national and state legislative seats could affect its fortunes at the poll. A lot would depend, too, on how well the PDP handles the internal dynamics, first, in holding the party together in the face of the defeat just recorded, and two, satisfying the yearnings of the party members when the time comes to decide those to fly its flag next year.

    The heavy role played by financial inducement in the election is an indication that every candidate for the next elections should be prepared to grease palms. It is an indication that the clamour for “stomach infrastructure” might not, after all, be limited to Ekiti State. It is also a pointer to the continued relevance of godfathers in Nigerian politics.

    In view of the results of the governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States, there is a need for scholars of Political Science and Political Sociology to come up with authoritative studies on the changing dynamics of politics, especially in the old Western Region. It will equally be useful to authoritatively determine the part played by federal might in the conduct and outcome of elections in this part of the world.

    Certainly, the last has not been heard of the Osun elections.