BY Taiwo George
The last time Lagosians witnessed anything close to the All Progressives Congress (APC) primaries of Thursday/Friday was in 1999 when Bola Ahmed Tinubu, national leader of the party, engaged the late Funsho Williams in a battle for the governorship ticket of the then Alliance for Democracy (AD). Tinubu won the primaries and won the gubernatorial election as well.
In 2003 when he sought reelection, there was no one else in contention for the party’s ticket, so he coasted to victory, steering the wheels of the state for another four years.
At the expiration of his tenure, his successor, Babatunde Fashola, emerged the consensus candidate of the Action Congress (AC) and subsequently won the election, too. Fashola is six months away from completing his second term but his own successor was never going to emerge through a similar process; and this led to the electoral exercise at the main bowl of the Onikan stadium, Ikoyi, lagos.
The primaries for 13 aspirants have now been concluded and although Akinwunmi Ambode is the happy one, there are lessons for everyone.
Many of his colleagues lost political relevance at the end of their governorship tenures, but eight years on, Tinubu, who the Borgu Kingdom in faraway Niger state bestowed with the chieftaincy title ‘Jagaban’, is by every inch decisively active not only in Lagos but nationally. Being the founder of the Action Congress (AC), which constituted the backbone of APC, Tinubu has been the national leader of the main opposition party.
When he publicly backed his chief of staff in 2007, some aggrieved candidates tried to pursue their ambitions via other party platforms but none of them could stop Tinubu’s anointed candidate, Babatunde Fashola. It is now seven years and very little seems to have changed. Since it became public that Akinwunmi Ambode had the backing of the man he served as accountant-general of Lagos, only other aspirants and their most loyal supporters must have harboured thoughts of the ticket going elsewhere.
Had the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) not joined the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and others to form the APC, Tinubu would never have allowed a primaries just like it happened in Fashola’s era. Having to take his candidate through the primaries was a true test of his grip on the party. Now, he has emerged unscathed.
Who knew Ambode at the beginning of the year? Adeyemi Ikuforiji, the first man in the history of the state to be elected as speaker of the state assembly twice, was certainly more popular. Ganiyu Solomon, a former local government chairman, former member of the state assembly and a serving senator, was expected to provide a sterner test than the result showed. With 3, 735 votes to Obafemi Hamzat’s 1,201, Ambode could afford to forfeit two-thirds of his vote – and he would still have emerged winner! It really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of Tinubu’s hardline brand of politicking, he is still the undisputed kingmaker of Lagos. For now, yes. For a long time to come, too? Maybe.
The ‘incumbency factor’ is a lexicon that the tickles the average politician. An incumbent governor seeking reelection is literally guaranteed a return; and if he has a candidate, someone has already become governor before the election date! In states such as Kano, Sokoto and Rivers, the incumbency calculation worked; the governors helped their favourites to the party’s governorship ticket. Not in Lagos.
Olasupo Shasore, erstwhile Lagos state attorney-general and commissioner for justice, must have silently told himself he stood a real chance to be governor in 2015, being the favourite of outgoing governor, Babatunde Fashola. Mention the incumbency factor to Shasore from now and expect a different reaction this time. “So what?” he could say!
So many people narrowed the governorship primaries to a two-way race between the candidates of the current and former governors of the state. Would it be Ambode? Or would Shasore spoil Tinubu’s party? Was it possible that Fashola had done enough to constitute himself to the nemesis of the very process that heralded his own governorship, ‘substituting’ Tinubu’s favourite with his?
It would be unfair, though, for anyone to blame Shasore for going head to head against Jagaban’s anointed candidate. Since Tinubu successfully used his own governorship machinery to enthrone Fashola eight years ago, Fashola should be able to use his for him as well. Analysts believed that if Shasore failed based on Tinubu’s strong influence in the party, it would be by a narrow margin. How shocked were they by the result! While Ambode coasted to victory with nearly 4,000 votes, Shasore ended up in a distant fifth place, polling just 112 votes of the total 5, 700 votes cast. How not to have a two-way race!
As far back as May, Ambode had received the endorsement of Rilwan Akiolu, the most prominent traditional ruler in the state. Outside the traditional setting, the support of the national leader of the party was also not in doubt, so Ambode was confident of victory. A few days to the election, all the other aspirants were grumbling about the system of indirect delegate voting that was to be adopted at the primaries. The party opted for indirect delegate primaries but the aspirants wanted the direct, which would have made their supporters eligible to vote, unlike indirect where the list of the delegates, as alleged by some party members, was made available to Tinubu and Ambode alone.
It was quite clear right from Onikan stadium, venue of the primaries, that Ambode was the man to beat. His entry into the stadium sent majority of the crowd into a frenzy, shouts of Ambode renting the air. Conversely, the arrival of other candidates was hardly noticeable. Voting was still in progress when he began to receive handshakes of congratulations from delegates. The air was charged with an Ambode victory.
So certain was his victory that some online mediums shockingly began reporting that he had won the primaries and had been declared APC’s governorship candidate! Truly shocking. At about 8am on Friday morning when his victory was officially announced by the party after his vote count was established, it seemed like journalists were only disseminating stale news.
Ayodele Fayose it was who popularised the concept of stomach infrastructure with the sharing of bags of rice and money to voters in the lead-up to the Ekiti state governorship election, which he won against Kayode Fayemi, the then incumbent governor. But on Thursday, TheCable spotted two separate groups of delegates sharing cash at the Onikan stadium, venue of the ‘intra-party’ election that produced Ambode as APC’s governorship candidate for 2015.
So, whether it is the PDP in Ekiti or the APC in Lagos, whether it is the PDP governorship primaries that will hold on Monday December 8 or the 2015 election itself, money-sharing remains the core foundation upon which intra-party or inter-party elections are built in Nigeria. Sad, isn’t it?
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