South-West: The end of PDP’s leaky umbrella

The defeat of the Peoples Democratic Party in the South-West began with intra-party crises and the desire of the people for a change, OLUSOLA FABIYI writes Anytime former President Olusegun Obasanjo wants to give a comical relief in any gathering, he does it with relish. He had done that on copious occasions. But when he was at the Journalists’ Estate, Arepo, Ogun State during a campaign tour he undertook to boost the electoral chances of the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Tunji Olurin, he lost his hilarious mien. One of the prospective voters had asked Obasanjo to convince them why they must vote for the PDP following the party’s dismal performance in the state in the last eight years. Otunba Gbenga Daniel, who is the governor of the state, was elected on the platform of the PDP, whose Board of Trustee Obasanjo chairs. It was a question he did not expect. But rather than defend his party, Obasanjo blasted Daniel, whose performance he said, had not been convincing enough.
He said, "I did not install Daniel. When I was President, I tried as much as possible to limit my interference in the affairs of states. I believed that I couldn’t carry elephant on my head and pick up crickets with my feet. When Daniel came to me and asked to go for a second term, I asked him what he had done to merit it. I told him to go and find a solution to the problems to which he promised me he would do in his second term. But his second term is worse than his first." It was a lamentation of a man who was twice the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. When he was leaving the estate, he did not know the calamity that would soon befall his party in the governorship election in his zone, the South-West.
In the 2007 elections, Obasanjo, who was then in power, had used the federal might to rig the polls in at least three out of the six states in the zone. The judgments of the Courts of Appeal that later upturned the declaration of the Independent National Electoral Commission as led by its former chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, which awarded victory to the PDP, attested to this. The states where such judgments were delivered were Osun, Ekiti and Ondo states. While the judiciary awarded victory to the Action Congress of Nigeria and sacked the PDP–led administration there, the Labour Party however was declared the winner of the governorship election in Ondo State. Thus, though governorship elections were not held in these three states, in the other three states — Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, the PDP vowed to reclaim Lagos and retain the remaining two. The opposition, which was mainly the ACN, also swore to regain the two states.
Backed with the good performance of the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji(SAN), which had also been adjudged good even by the members of the PDP, the ACN swung into action with robust campaign. At the end of the election, both Oyo and Ogun fell into the waiting hands of the ACN.
Before his eventual fall, the Governor of Oyo State, Chief Adebayo Alao-Akala, had boasted to win the election by all means. He had also classified the eventual winner of the election, Senator Abiola Ajimobi as lacking the political will to fight him. His predecessor, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, who ran on the ticket of the Accord Party, was also seen by Alao-Akala as a paper tiger.
Unfortunately, most of the things he considered as advantaged were seen as his albatross by the voters. First, was his unending war with two powerful royal fathers in the state. These are the Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Samuel Odulana and the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi. At a point, there were fears that the governor could depose the two powerful royalfathers based on the way he was talking and abusing their offices. At a point, the Alaafin raised the alarm that the governor was planning to kill him. But in defence, the governor said there was no reason for him to kill the Oba since he has the power to depose him if he wanted. On Olubadan, the governor also refused to take President Goodluck Jonathan to pay a courtesy call on the referred royal father when the president visited the Oyo State capital for the governor’s birthday anniversary.
This pitched the elite of the state against the governor, who is also said to have performed below expectation. But the governor remained adamant, even to the extent that the call by Chief Azees Arisekola that he should apologise to the Alaafin was not heeded. He carried his stubbornness to the higher institution, where he tried in vain to annex the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, whose headquarters is located in his home town, Ogbomoso. The institution, which is jointly owned by Oyo and Osun states, was established before the creation of the latter. When his counterpart from Osun State, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola reminded him that there was a law that established the university and that such law must be obeyed, Alao-Akala kicked.
But the entering into the race by Ladoja made the members of the opposition to fear that the unwanted man in Government House, Agodi could win the election again. To avert this, Aregbesola also paid an unscheduled visit to the former governor, asking him to step down for Ajimobi.
He bluntly refused. "If Ladoja had acceded to this request, he would have thought that he was responsible for Ajimobi’s victory," said Chief Fadun Olarinjoye, a political scientist. Thus, with the refusal of Ladoja, the voters still voted and made sure that the governor ended the eight years rein of the PDP in the state with a heavy defeat for his party. The governor-elect polled a total of 420, 852 votes against Alao-Akala’s 387,132 votes and Ladoja’s 275,773 votes to emerge the winner of the contest. Apart from this, his party was merely able to win one out of the three senatorial seats in the state.
In Ogun State, the ego rumba between Obasanjo and Daniel ended with the polarisation of the party in the state. Following the court declaration of Olurin as the PDP governorship candidate in the state, Daniel pulled his followers out of the party and joined the Peoples Party of Nigeria, where it fielded Alhaji Gboyega Isiaka, as its governorship candidate. Before then, many had thought that Daniel’s visit to Obasanjo’s house where he begged him would signify the end to the rift between them. After more than three hours closed door meeting, the embattled governor came out and told journalists that he had begged Obasanjo. Though he did not say whether he actually prostrated for him or not as being rumoured, but the governor said he had begged. He promised that he would continue to beg.
"Let me say this to you, I am a true Yoruba son, and in Yorubaland it doesn’t matter who is right or who is wrong. It is the younger that will beg the older person. So, I have begged Baba and I will continue to beg him."

If Obasanjo had indeed forgiven Daniel, the same cannot be said of the crowd that came to welcome President Goodluck Jonathan to the state for his presidential campaign. Dressed in a green kampala with Obasanjo and Jonathan, the governor was humiliated as he was booed by the capacity crowd at the MKO Abiola Stadium, Abeokuta, venue of the party’s presidential campaign rally. While Obasanjo received fabulous round of applause every time his name was mentioned, from the huge supporters of the party that swarmed the stadium, it was boos and jeers for Daniel every time his name was mentioned.

L-R: Olusegun Obasanjo, Gbenga Daniel

That must have infuriated the governor as event of the following days showed that he merely shed crocodile tears. Efforts made by the leadership of the party and the President to broker peace among the members of the party did not yield any positive result.
At the end of the day, the ACN became the beneficiary of the intra-party imbroglio that engulfed the PDP in the state as the party swept all the three senatorial seats in the state and also won convincingly in both the House of Representatives and the state house of assembly election in the state. It capped the victory with the winning of the state governorship election, where its candidate, Sen. Amosun was declared the winner. In Lagos, Osun, Ekiti and Ondo States, the PDP faced the same doom as no single senator emerged from there. It only won one senatorial seat in Oyo State.
But the pattern of the voting in the South-West has attracted the attention of the National Vice-Chairman of the PDP in the zone, Alhaji Tajudeen Oladipo, who chided the Yoruba for voting against the ruling PDP. Oladipo expressed concerns that the decision by the South-West to opt out of ‘mainstream politics’ would negate development in the zone. But when asked to mention the achievements the South-West had recorded in the last 12 years, Oladipo could not give one achievement. "We want to serve the people; if the people say we should not serve them, we won’t force ourselves on them."

But what will be the reaction of the apostle of ‘do-or-die’ electoral philosophy, Obasanjo to this huge electoral defeat? The former president had, at the party’s presidential rally at the Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos, sang in Yoruba, "Lau erebe, erebe lau; Obasanjo oni gba kadibo kama wole o, lau erebe, erebe lau." Literally translated, the song means, "Bravo is the song of the day, Obasanjo cannot condone, Obasanjo would resist if we vote and we don’t win."Now, that they did not win, what will Baba do? Chief Ebenezer Babatope answered. "We will go to the drawing board, settle our political differences and see if we would be able to come back like the ACN by 2015." Until then, the people in the zone may not need the umbrella, even when it is raining.

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