Ekiti 2018 election: A post-mortem

A variety of issues surrounded the just-conducted governorship election in Ekiti State. SAM NWAOKO examines the aftermath

The July 14, 2018 governorship election in Ekiti State has opened different frontiers of political discussions in the state and Nigeria. The election had long been in the news for very many reasons, and among the top topics on the list of the people were the fears of insecurity and possible monetary inducement by the various political parties that indicated interest in contesting the election.

And the election day came, people voted; and the election’s result has been viewed from differing perspectives by various gladiators, depending on which side of the political spectrum they find themselves. For those who are on the side of the All Progressives Congress (APC) which was declared winner, the election was a free and fair contest and one for which Nigerians should rejoice.

However, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the people on the side of the party are not seeing the election in the same light. For those in the PDP divide, the election was fraught with irregularities and danger for their supporters. The party has, expectedly rejected the result as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and announced that it would challenge the results in court.

For all the 32 other political parties that ran the electoral race with the PDP and APC, there has not been anything heard publicly or officially about the election. Social Democratic Party (SDP); Action Democratic Party (ADP); Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP); Accord, Mega Party of Nigeria (MPN); Labour Party, Progressives People’s Alliance (PPA); People for Democratic Change (PDC); Nigeria Peoples’ Congress (PDC); All People’s Alliance (APA), among others, were also part of the contest and they scored votes too.

None of them has reacted publicly to the outcome of the contest, thereby endorsing the contention by many observers and commentators that the election was indeed a battle between the PDP and APC.

 

How the election was won and lost

The INEC formally announced the results in the early hours of Sunday, July 15 at the headquarters of the commission in Ado Ekiti. Before then, the long wait for the results from the 2,195 polling units and 256 voting points in the 177 electoral wards in the 16 local governments, had been on.

While the results trickled in, the social media was in literal turmoil while the people of the state and beyond were agitated with expectation of who the winner would be. The tension that followed, and was sustained after the voting, was very high across the state and beyond because the results showed that the contest was close and the results didn’t come up with any clear leader. In the end, however, the APC won in 12 local government areas of the state while the PDP won in four.

The results showed that the APC won in some of the areas it had never won before, while the PDP also performed the same feat in some communities in the state. For instance, the PDP lost in areas believed to be its traditional strongholds, such as Okemesi, Ido, Ode, among some others, while the APC lost election in Aiyegbaju-Ekiti for the first time in the state.

In the final analysis, the PDP lost Ido/Osi Local Government, Gbonyin Local Government, Ekiti West Local Government and Irepodun/Ifelodun Local Government. These local governments were counted among analysts as those that would be easily won by the PDP. To many of the commentators on the surprises in the election, PDP lost in Irepodun/Ifelodun Local Government the home council area of Governor Ayodele Fayose, who is not just a leader of the PDP, but also the incumbent governor of the state.

INEC through its chief returning officer and Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor Idowu Olayinka, announced that the candidate of the APC, Dr Kayode Fayemi, having polled the highest number of lawful votes, was the winner of the election.

Professor Olayinka declared that the Fayemi got 197,459 votes to defeat his closest rival in the contest, Professor Kolapo Olusola of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who got 178,121 votes.

To many, the announcement by the INEC’s chief returning officer signalled the formal end of the Ekiti 2018 governorship election.”

However, among the issues raised by some of the gladiators, which they also claimed played roles in the outcome of the election, were the loss of strong members and big names by the PDP prior to the election. There are also contentions among the people of the state that a lot of the members of the party were not happy with the kind of leadership Governor Fayose provided for the party.

The argument they put forward was that this category of members chose to stay in the party rather than defect. They stayed in the party to watch Governor Fayose walk the road alone and refused to do much for the party in the election.

For those who are blaming the loss of big name members of PDP to APC, the argument is that PDP lost in Ido because Governor Fayose fell out with Cyril Fasuyi, who is a strong member of the community; PDP lost in Oye because the party lost an important member like Senator Ayo Arise; PDP lost in Ise-Ekiti because a man like a former minister and erstwhile national publicity Secretary of the PDP, Prince Adedayo Adeyeye, left the party.

According to one of them, “yes there are electoral infractions here and there in the overall conduct of the election, but the major factor, as far as I’m concerned, is the many bigwigs which we lost in the run-up to the election. I do not see anything wrong in keeping the Olukere of Ikere close to us and courting him, when we had realised that he is an influential factor in the town.”

However, the publicity secretary of the PDP in the state, Mr. Jackson Adebayo, saw it differently. He traced the outcome of the polls to factors he said were outside the internal issues of PDP membership in the state and those who might have left the party in the build-up to the election.

Adebayo rather attributed the loss of the election, especially in those areas believed to be traditional PDP, to what he referred to as “massive vote-buying, and this was the case not just in the PDP strongholds, but also in all the areas in the state where we lost the election.”

The contention of supporters of the APC on the outcome of the election and the position of Adebayo, of the PDP, the morning after, summed up the general feeling about the governorship contest.

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Pre-election scenario in APC, PDP

Prior to the election, the issue of security was on the front burner of discussion in and outside the state. The PDP had cried out in an allegation that its leaders and supporters were being hounded and arrested by security agents, and even claiming that some of the security agents involved in the clampdown operations were fake.

But the police authorities in the state said there were no reports of such arrests and intimidation brought to them. A few days to the election, PDP members had been dispersed with shots into the air and tear gas, when they converged on the Fajuyi Park in Ado Ekiti for a rally. On the same day, Governor Ayodele Fayose told the world amid tears that he had been injured allegedly by the security agents and that the plan was to assassinate him and incapacitate his deputy.

These events, coupled with the earlier announcement by the Inspector-General of Police that 30,000 security operatives would be deployed, led to high security fears among the people of the state, and drew further attention of both Nigerians and the international community to the security of the electorate on the election day. However, the police explained that the deployment was for the good of all in the electoral process.

A few weeks before the election, the APC appeared to be heading for turmoil when news filtered in that Chief Segun Oni, who came second in the APC primaries, had reportedly gone to court to challenge the candidature of Fayemi. The news of the case threw some level of confusion into the camp of APC.

The Segun Oni Campaign Organisation said through a communiqué signed by its Director-General, Dr Ife Arowosoge, that a suit was filed by the government, aimed at “rendering our party incapable of presenting candidate at the election or removing him from office after winning the election if Ekiti State government wins their case no matter how long that takes.”

The group also said the matter was also “to protect the best interest of the members of the group and the greatest interest of the greatest number of Ekiti people,” and added that “the legal action will defend our rights, privileges and interests within the party.”

The controversy flowing from the court case was still on when the election took place on July 14. On the election day, one of the remarkable things that observers said they noted was the early and large turnout of Ekiti people to cast their votes, despite the initial threats of insecurity. It was a pointer to the determination of Ekiti people to vote, irrespective of what the security situation was like.

Early in the day of the election, there were reports of attacks on some party supporters by political thugs, while the concerned party stakeholders alleged that the police were neither picking their calls nor responding to the concern. Another pointer to the election was the cash-for-vote syndrome, which became widespread in the state.

In the end, even observers, such as the Election Situation Room, a coalition of about 70 civil society organisations, called for a legislation against cash for votes at elections.

However, INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Professor AbdulGaniy Raji, who spoke after the final results were announced, described as “wonderful” the conduct of the people of the state and what INEC achieved with the conduct of the election.

Professor Raji, while reacting to some of the shortcomings reported in the conduct of the election, said the shortcomings were “part of politics, it is nothing new and it happens almost everywhere and so, that’s not new.

But all those don’t seem to matter anymore as the APC has been declared winner of the election. The aftermath is what the people are on the lookout for. And part of the aftermath is the declaration by the candidate of the PDP that he would not accept the result of the election as announced by INEC, and that his party will go to court to challenge it.

Chairman of the party in the state, Chief Gboyega Oguntuwase, who addressed newsmen in Ado Ekiti, on Monday, said no fewer than 20 members of his party were still unaccounted for, and that many of them had to run for dear life when they came under attack by alleged thugs of APC also under the watch of policemen.

Candidate of the party, Professor Kolapo Olusola first gave the official hint that the PDP would challenge the results of the election. He listed a number of actions he said were against the conduct of the election, and declared that his party rejects the results and would challenge it.

But Dr Fayemi’s address as the governor-elect when he was received at the APC secretariat in Ado Ekiti, after the final results were announced, told of the need for the people to come together. He charged the PDP, Governor Fayose and Professor Olusola to accept defeat as he did when he lost to them in 2014.

Fayemi said: “Let them behave the way we behaved in 2014; we should all know that in an election of this nature, you can only have one governor at a time. We conceded in 2014 and our counterparts on the other side should accept defeat for peace to reign in Ekiti State and they should refrain from violence for Ekiti to enjoy peace.”

On the various allegations of irregularities in the conduct of the election, Fayemi said: “We are particularly pleased that while there were reports of minor breaches as you would find with any high stakes contest, the entire process was adjudged to be generally free, fair, and credible.”

And those words sum up the feelings of APC members and the party itself. The publicity secretary of the party in the state, Chief Taiwo Olatunbosun, said in a statement that the election was keenly contested but thanked the people of the state for supporting their candidate.

So far, Ekiti is still calm, and the people’s fingers are crossed in bated wait for the next step of the various political gladiators.