By Boye Sanda
To all intents and purposes, the governorship election coming up in Ondo State on 20th October promises to be an epic battle. On a surface plain, the battle is between
South-West integrationists and a recalcitrant administration which has refused to buy into the regional integration agenda of the opposition party.
But observers say it is in reality a battle between rampaging moneybags and proven democrats and revolutionary administrators.
The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), is trying to register an impact following the breakdown of discussions between it and the current governor. The ACN leadership, having aligned itself with the Appeal Court victory of the Ondo State governor despite fielding its own candidate, Prince Ademola Adegoroye, in the 2007 governorship election in the state, had become increasingly hostile to the state government owing to the latter’s insistence that the resources of the state could not be traded off on the altar of political patronage. The party thus resorted to its trademark propaganda, launching a bitter war on the governor and his party through a radio station (Adaba FM) in the state.
Its national leadership in Lagos also openly vents its disdain for the Olusegun Mimiko-led Labour Party (LP) administration from the Lagos end, particularly through the newspapers that are increasingly associated with the ACN leadership. This two-pronged attack is, however, being countered, first, dissenting media houses; secondly, by many eminent Nigerians who are daily associating themselves with the revolutionary programmes of the state government and, thirdly, by the masses of Ondo people themselves, who have vowed that the developmental drive in the state would never be halted by foreign economic desperadoes.
In any case, keen observers of the Ondo scenario say that the ruling party would be needing much more than its alleged domineering hold on the South-West media to unseat the ruling LP government in the state, particularly in regard to the widespread joy in all quarters over the state governor’s refusal to join what analysts refer to as the resource transfer bandwagon in the region.
Again, while the ruling ACN daily expresses confidence that it would uproot the LP administration in Ondo State, strong evidence points to the fact that even the assumed hold on the five states that it currently controls may turn out a mirage. The ousted ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has become increasingly visible in the propaganda market, attacking the ruling party with the same tool with which it (ACN) made its inroads into the South-West, and fuelling speculations that it (PDP) might have woken up from its media slumber, brokering sustained reconciliation moves among its aggrieved members and promising to return to power in the region by 2015.
Conversely, members of the PDP in Ondo State are currently in a dilemma over the October governorship race in the state arising largely from the daunting task of putting forward a candidate credible enough to confront a ruling party which is widely perceived as setting the pace for governance not only in the country but in fact on the entire African continent.
Of the many burdens which the ruling ACN has to grapple with, particularly strenuous are the increasingly poor image of its leadership in the eyes of Nigerians, its Akoko agenda which is currently causing ripples among other geo-ethnic nationalities in the state, and its astounding array of aspirants jostling for the Ondo top seat.
With the refusal of its propaganda against Mimiko to fly in the face of the deluge of awards won by the governor in the last six months at least, the ACN has resorted to the claim that no governor rules Ondo twice. This claim is hinged on the fact that the late Adebayo Adefarati of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) contested for a second term even though he lost, while the immediate past governor, Olusegun Agagu, had in fact enjoyed two years of a stolen mandate before being sacked by the Court of Appeal. But the fact of a second term guaranteed by sterling first term was set by the late Adekunle Ajasin, whose return to office in 1983 was only terminated by the military. Interestingly, from a developmental perspective, many eminent and credible commentators have pointed out that Dr Olusegun Mimiko is the successor of the late Ajasin.
Thus, with the Ondo people’s proven knack for standing by sterling performers, the road to the Alagbaka Government House beckons clearly to the incumbent. This is despite the fact that the ACN, like it recently did in Kwara, Sokoto, kogi, Bayelsa and Kebbi, is taking over Ondo State on the pages of newspapers.
Since the recent vicious attack on the Ondo State governor by his Osun State counterpart, his popularity, as would be sufficiently clear from even a casual look at the social media, has continued to soar, with the reverse being the case for the ACN. Evidently, the propaganda war is not working.
A geo-ethnic demographic analysis of the context of the October election places the ruling LP government at perhaps an unquestioned advantage. Of the three senatorial districts in the state (Ondo South, Central and North), the LP has consistently maintained its dominance in two (South and Central), while boasting a considerable presence in the remaining district (Ondo North), where the current deputy governor, Alhaji Ali Olanusi, hails from, helped by defections almost on a daily basis arising from its acknowledged sterling performance.
With the LP’s hold in the most populous sections of the state, Akure and Ondo, with the votes in Akure South alone being more than four local government areas in Akoko, it is clearly the party in contention. The LP songs is most resonant in Ondo West, the incumbent governor’s own local government area, Idanre with a local government, Odigbo-Ore (two local governments) and Owo/Ose, which, because of homogeneity, would toe the line of Akure/ Ifedore. With Ondo North being divided over the governor’s performance, the fate of the ACN’s strategy of picking its deputy governor from Ilaje is shrouded in confusion, as the Ilajes have made it clear that they are comfortable with the present administration.
Indeed, the ACN’s hope of breaking into Ondo South is being dashed on a daily basis. For instance, recently, Yele Omogunwa, the immediate past commissioner for works in Ondo State and a chieftain of the PDP, dumped the party and returned to the LP in Ode-Irele, while thousands of ACN members from Ilaje Local Government Area led by Mr Akintoye Ebie also joined the LP.
“I’m fully back into Labour Party today. Many people are saying all sorts of things about me but I want to tell you that a wife cannot say that because she has misunderstanding with her husband that she cannot return to her home.
“I came back in the interest of progress, in the interest of my town and in the interest of the state. I want to let you know that Dr Mimiko, during my tenure as works commissioner, awarded more than 5 km of township roads here in Irele for us, which no government had done before. I want to let the people of this state know that the return of Dr Mimiko to Government House is real”. This is despite the fact that meanings are being read into the Akoko agenda being openly floated by the opposition. As noted by an observer: The Akoko agenda is fuelling distrust in the state. What about the other 14 local government areas? How would the Akoko agenda cater for their interests?’’
The questions being raised about the Akoko agenda relate to political antecedents in the state, as none of Ajasin, Agagu, Adefarati or Bamidele Olumilua ever relied on geo-ethnic agenda to make the Alagbaka Government House. Indeed, even on a contiguous basis, the Akoko agenda ignores the more populous Owo, but is the political calculation that the likes of Professor Ajayi Boroffice rely on. However, the ACN has a unique burden with 35 candidates, which is creating concern about the seriousness of the party in the political circles, as the party is increasingly being seen as a band of confused though over-ambitious individuals. However, with the party’s style of picking its candidate from those resident outside a state, many of the current aspirants, including its coordinator Jumoke Anifowose, who has now joined the guber race, may be on a wild goose chase.
One notable feature of the ACN’s current campaign is its politically dangerous act of writing off the LP government while failing to put in place alternative political structures. The governor’s antecedents as a political strategist and mass mobilise who has risen from the ranks over the years as a councillor, two-time commissioner, Secretary to the State Government and even Minister of the Federal Republic are bound to startle any genuine opposition. But it seems that the party (ACN’s) acknowledged financial resources and media power are all that is being relied on to unseat the current governor. But if, within just four months, he was able to mobilise the people and win the battle to Government House when he defected from the PDP to nurture the LP, his widening political base in the last three years can obviously not be ignored.
In all, then, the ruling LP government holds the ace as far as the October 20 election is concerned.
Bayo Sanda is an Owo, Ondo State-based social worker and commentator.