It meant that after having the sole privilege of governing the state for eight years, Mimiko would instal a surrogate and become a governor-general. What has he done in terms of performance to deserve that?
He would not allow the politicians to get their ‘rewards’...”Agagu build roads but forgot to build the most important road - the one that leads to the stomach” to put it exactly the way most PDP youths described him. Mimiko had presented himself as “one of the gang” leader. He was not elitist. He would drink garri with his followers and pick calls from complete strangers. This personality resonated better than Agagu’s blunt (perhaps arrogant) and elitist style. When Mimiko became governor, his style changed and almost all the people who heralded him to power became enstranged to him.
But aside Mimiko 360 degree political altercations, the PDP leadership exercised very poor political tactics. The second coming of Mimiko to the party was poorly managed. Instead of seeing Jimoh Ibrahim as a renegade, the leadership should have found a way to accommodate his stance. They might have hated Ibrahim the person but should not have ignored his legitimate argument that integration of LP to PDP could and should have been seamless. Good political leaders always try to avoid factions, no matter how small. As Yoruba people say: “when you cut a snake into two, both parts are poisonous”. In facing the electorate, it was tactically right to pick a highlyresponsible technocrat in mould of Jegede, but was a big blunder to pick him from Akure, 20 kilometres from Ondo town, Mimiko’s home town (both in the same Senatorial District). It meant that after having the sole privilege of governing the state for eight years, Mimiko would instal a surrogate and become a governor-general. What has he done in terms of performance to deserve that? Finally, on PDP’s very wrong tactics: it was over-assumptuous to push Jegede into the race despite the political blows he had suffered through Jimoh Ibrahim’s controversial litigations. The better tactic was to have allowed Ibrahim to fly the ticket of the PDP and then go to the courts to retrieve the mandate from him.
Thinking Ibrahim would not win the election would make you suffer the Trumpeffect. Of course, he had a good chance to win and the events proved he could have won.. Ibrahim’s strategic plan was this: “Don’t waste your time campaigning. That was my mistake in 2003. What will determine the winner would be money. Anyone who scores 300,000 votes would win. But I will vote money for 500,000 voters leaving 200,000 to take my money and not vote for me. I will give 5,000 to each vote that is just N1.5billion. Spend N500million on campaigns and I am in Government House”. One of his political leaders told me that Ibrahim got intelligence that a contestant was planning to spend N5,000 per voter and he (Ibrahim) had planned to move the stake to N10,000 per voter.” With an ally in Mimiko who also knows the art of using money for electioneering, PDP would have won. But the Mimiko group perhaps felt that it might have been difficult unseating Ibrahim if he became governor. That was a wrong tactic, as far as I am concerned.
What made the APC to win in Ondo State?
The factors that made PDP lose were not the major factors that made the APC win. The major reason APC won was the party’s superior political tactics. The party capitalized on the political quagmire in the PDP to but winning strategies. There are three categories of voters in Ondo State: the loyal partymembers (this category wouldn’t trade their votes for any amount of money); the undecided voters (this category is neither here not there for various reasons); and the swing voters (those who like to vote for the highest bidders). Over 150,000 of Akeredolu’s 245,000 votes came from undecided and swing voters. It was pure strategy. All the parties induced voters with money, but APC did it better, having read the scenario very well. The APC read the political atmosphere very well. To block Oke’s clean sweep of Ondo South, they picked Agboola Ajayi a strong grassroot politician and former House of Representatives member of the PDP from Ese-Odo. Ese-Odo and Ilaje have been in some political rivalry for a long time.Kogi governor came with loads of ‘logistics” for the votes of Ebiras and other Kogi indigenes resident in Ondo State; GovsLalong and Okorocha made similar political pilgrimage. The APC was just hungry for every votes. Theirstrategists plotted exactly where their votes would come from and it really worked at it. Their doors were open and they kept persuading swingers to come on board. Lessons from the elections. Now let us come down to the lessons from the Ondo polls:
1. People vote for both political parties and personalities. The Supreme Court will have to review its ruling that people vote for parties not candidates. It is strange ruling and absurd in the political clime and Ondo State has proved just that. Or are we saying Jegede, Ibrahim, Akeredolu and Oke were not factors in the poll? I can bet AD would have scored less than 1,000 votes across the state but for Oke who flew the party’s ticket. For lower elections such as state assembly or event House of Representatives, one might agree that people vote for parties; certainly not for governorship elections or the presidential elections. With all the hundreds of billions spent to make Goodluck Jonathan win against a rather poor Buhari, how can rightthinking human beings say Nigerians did not vote for Buhari but for a political party. That one lesson from the Ondo guber election.
2. The principle of zoning is a factor in most elections in Nigeria. Even a councillorship and local government levels, the principle of zoning is very dominant in Ondo politics. It may not be critical in other states; not Ondo State. Mimiko went too far in picking someone from a neigbhouring town in the same senatorial district in the last elections.
3. Now that the votes are counting, performance matters. It is possible to owe seven months salary and still election but certainly not the way GovMimiko went about it. Perhaps he could have offered more plausible explanations, or manage to pay much of the salaries before the election . In the first place, he should not have presented himself as someone trying to appoint a successor. Poor governance made thousands of people join the army of ‘swingers’, not poverty.
4. Politics is money. Let us not run away from reality. An analyst said if the election was postponed for another week, the PDP would have increased monetary inducement but that it was not possible to mobilize matching huge funds within 24 hours after the court verdict. The way to address the issue of monetary inducement is not to be utopian about it. Even in the United States, huge money is spent on electioneering. At our level of development, the primary objective for the votes to count - we can work later on motives. American politicians spend billions on media infrastructure, here we spend millions on stomach infrastructure. What should concern us for now, is the source of funds, not where the money goesto. If you don’t have the money, don’t join politics. If these monies are raised legitimately form commoners and reputable institutions who want certain legitimate policies and programmes in place, why not? Why deceive ourselves in this terrible poverty around. Finally on money, political canvassers do spend money genuinely to get votes. I carried two voters from Lagos to my village in Ondo State to vote. Unfortunately, they could not return with me as I had to undertake a detour. Even at home, home voters registered in farmstead many kilometres away from the town. The unit canvassers have to ensure that the logistics are in place. It cost money. One aged woman bluntly refused to leave her house to vote giving hunger as excuse. The canvasser had to organize a breakfast for her and that was different from voting money.
5. When elections are free and fair, so-called political chieftains are demystified. In Ondo state, the voting unit is where the action is. The real chieftains are the ward canvassers…if the elections are free and fair. But is manipulation of votes is what counts, then you need the party chieftains. Most voters in the state are independent-minded. It is only family heads (like husbands), or benefactors (e.g. a performing elected official) or exceptional cases of primordial ethnic sentiments (e.g. Owo people and Akeredolu/ Ilaje and Ikale people for Oke) that you tend to have huge block votes.
6. What goes up or goes around…the Law of Karma works in politics of Ondo State. Mimiko sacked Agagu through the courts in controversial circumstances. Mimiko’s political extension was sacked by the courts more or less in controversial circumstances. Mimiko decamped to LP allegedly because Agagu prevented him from running the primaries of the PDP. The imposition of Jegede was a major reason many chieftains moved from PDP to APC and AD, which ultimately proved costly for the PDP. Tinubu turned against the likes of Pa Abraham Adesanya to establish his political dynasty. People are turning against Tinubu but we do not know yet if they can create a sustainable dynasty for themselves.
The biggest lesson from Ondo State is that 2019 might be very messy if politicians do not exercise a lot of restraint. Governance will suffer too much if at this morning time the air is so thick of intense politics and politricks.