The most keenly-contested governorship election in Nigeria was finally concluded on Thursday, September 27, 2018, awashwith controversies.
The original election,held on Saturday, September 22, was declared inconclusive by INEC owing to the fact that the victorymarginof 353 votes of first-placed candidate, Senator Ademola Adeleke (254,698 votes) of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), over second-placed Gboyega Oyetola (254,345 votes) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was less than the 3498 votes cancelled in seven polling units.Hence, the electoral body held a rerun of the elections in those affected polling units, with Oyetola emerging as overall winner.
Oyetola won the rerun with a difference of 853 votes, having got1160 votes whereasAdeleke got 325. In totality, Oyetola got 255,505 votes, 482 more than Adeleke’s 255,023; and thus, was declared winner, and governor-elect of Osun State.
Itwas theslimmest margin by which a person has ever emerged as winner of a Nigerian gubernatorial election; the closest to it were the 2015 governorship election in Kogi where Alhaji Yahaya Bello of the APC beat Capt. Idris Wada of the PDP with 42,875 votes, and the Imo 2011 election where Rochas Okorocha of APGA edged out Chief Ikedi Ohakim of PDP with 46,369 votes.
As is expected, the keenly-contested race was won amidst hugeconflict and polemics; after all, if living in Nigeria has taught us one thing, it’s that there is a very high tendency for elections to end with bloodied people, harassedand molested supporters, and the defeated chagrinned, and crying “foul!” Afterthe rerun polls, there were allegations of rigging and extreme violence from boththe PDP and the APC. The latter, the ruling party, said that with the outcome of the elections the “Osun people have spoken.”
In a statement by the Director of Publicity of APC, Mr Kunle Oyatomi, the party said: “The PDP was unable to manipulate the result this time around, so they are crying foul. We have always known and have made ourselves clear before the election that the PDP had made elaborate arrangement to rig the election through the manipulation of the card readers and it was this process that made them get the votes, allocated to them in the first ballot.
“Nobody expected the PDP to even come second. Most people in Osun have the belief that it would be a straight fight between the APC and SDP. But as God would have it, Osun was saved from the vultures.
“We like Osun people to understand that the run-off votes went the way it did because the PDP was unable to manipulate the card readers this time around and fortunately the police thwarted their plot of buying and trying to use the PVCs of suspecting voters. That was why some of their leaders were arrested. So the PDP should look for other excuses.
“They attempted to win by fraud, they failed in the first round and eventually lost the re-run election.’’
The PDP on the other hand said that the election was rigged by the APC, and that “Adeleke’s mandate was stolen from him.”The spokesperson for Adeleke’s campaign organisation, in a statement, said: “We report to the whole world the brazen theft and daylight swindling of Osun people who were criminally denied their rights to vote and be voted for by an anti-people conspiracy among INEC, security agencies and the ruling All Progressive Congress. An unprecedented travesty of justice and the shattering of democratic values are ongoing in Osun State.
“The whole world is witnessing a charade in the name of an election, a deliberate effort at the imposition of a discredited leadership on the suffering people of Osun State through undisguised brutal force, applying all standards, the supplementary poll is a non-event as all norms of electoral process were violated.
“Journalists and election monitors are blocked from accessing many voting areas. Those who attempted gaining access are attacked by hooded thugs. PDP leaders are hounded and arrested. It was a brutal unleashing of force against unarmed election stakeholders.”
From the party’s reaction, they willprobablytake the matter to tribunal.Of course this elicits neither consternation nor fear; again, living in Nigeria has shown us that many elections drag on to tribunals. But there is an important lesson to be pulled from Osun State. The last two most keenly-contested elections – Kogi in 2015 and Imo in 2011 – ended with the ruling party being ousted from power. Here, the APC have maintained their seat. It is a testament to their political might that they have entrenched themselves in the Southwest – they now control all six states. 2019 is coming; with APC in ascendancy, and the Big Stage only a few months away, one can only wonder …
As was said earlier, there is no feeling of worry to be felt in the moaning of the just-defeated PDP, or their potential move to seek redress in court; none at all. But there is something else though. Beyond the mere transposition of Powers in Osun State, and the drawn-out – perhaps heartfelt – wailing of the nosed out, there was a warning from the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) that INEC and APC would be “making 1983 electoral crisis a child’s play if they act like this in 2019.” Now this might be regarded as mere howling from the defeated (the CUPP is, after all, still the PDP), but we should remember that the CUPP is the product of a merger between PDP and thirty-odd parties in hopes of ousting APC from power. If they fail, they might not bow out in peace; bad losers abound in Nigerian politics – we have seen it many times. APC is also no exception; it is impossible to guess if they will easily accept defeat, in the event that they lose.
Is 2019 an explosion waiting to happen? We hope not. The major parties arethe products of synergy. If two such powers clash, it would not bode well for the country. History buffs, or perhaps those who are old enough to remember that time,would not wish for another crisis like that of 1983. But if both the winners and the losers insist that the other side performed heinous acts to rig the elections, or in an attempt to do so, then one can only wonder …
Is the Osun election a microcosm of the presidential election next year? We hope not. We hope for a free and fair election, with an indisputable winner; that in essence would ensure a safe after-election climate in the country.
