Ondo 2016 and emergence of another ‘orphan’

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Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko

Jimoh Ibrahim

Rotimi Akeredolu

Eyitayo Jegede

Olusola Oke

The two dominant political platforms, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) which analysts had predicted would have a straight fight for the top seat, are being weighed down by fallouts of their controversial primary elections.

Apart from the problem of in-fighting at its national leadership that has permeated to the state level, the ruling PDP is facing a set of self-inflicted problems some of which emanated from the defection of the governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko to the party just before the 2015 general elections.

Mimiko, with the support of Wadata House, took over the structure of the party and allegedly sidelined the aborigines who had, since 2009 when former Governor Olusegun Agagu was removed from office by court pronouncements, suffered “political persecution” in the hands of Akure and Abuja.

As it was in 2014 when the old members, desirous of having a little space in a house they built, found a Moses in billionaire businessman, Jimoh Ibrahim, the Igbotako-born politician is the arrow-head of an internal opposition that has succeeded in using the courts to snatch the party’s flag from Eyitayo Jegede SAN, the anointed candidate of Mimiko.

However, supporters of Mimiko are pointing accusing fingers at some external forces, which the governor, at a hurriedly convened meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari last week, reportedly identified as the leadership of the APC.

But internal sources put the blame of the legal crisis on the shoulders of the governor’s camp for its inability to appeal or seek to quash, within the 90-day window, the controversial order of the Federal High Court Abuja recognizing the factional leadership of Senator Ali Modu Sheriff as the one to organise the primary election to pick Ondo’s PDP flagbearer.

With the lingering litigation, currently, at the Court of Appeal, which observers argued could be elongated to weaken the structure of the PDP before Election Day, many members are already leaving the shadows of the umbrella for other platforms.

This week, two aides of Governor Olusegun Mimiko, whom many believe is central to the crisis because of what he did or did not do in the management of the party and the state, resigned their membership of the PDP.

Characteristic of politicians who drawn to political opportunities like butterflies to nectars, a lot of PDP members in Mimiko’s camp are said to be preparing to leave the fold to seek their fortunes elsewhere in the next week if the litigation continues to drag on.

Already, the camp has been hit by such despair that even the most optimistic of them could not muster enough conviction to go on campaign even when there are calls that the party should be made to win the election first before the determination of the legal candidate.

The governor himself and many of his top aides including Jegede, have relocated to Abuja, obviously to seek political solution to a crisis that is heavily tilted in favour of Ibrahim who only need to use every trick in the books to prolong the litigation to completely destroy the base of the party.

Ibrahim, whose campaign office in Akure is deserted and devoid of any activities and whose only attempt to show seriousness about his ambition was a visit to his Igbotako community last Sunday with hundreds of flamboyantly decorated cars where he sought the blessings of the monarch of the Osooro clan of his Ikale nation, the Rebuja, is believed to be obsessed with one thing, prevent Mimiko from having his way once more.

He is said to be piqued by Mimiko’s decision not to honour all the agreements the duo had, from 2007 when Ibrahim allegedly provided the war chest for the governor to realise his ambition with an unsigned treaty of reciprocity after a term of office, to the one that conceded some percentage of inclusion for the old members in the PDP under the leadership of Mimiko.

The arguments that the Jegede campaigns that was approaching a crescendo before the hammer, in the form of the recognition of Ibrahim by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the candidate of the party, fell last week, should continue with the same zest, could not hold water as many party faithful are not sure of what the outcome of the efforts would be.

To many, the kind of legal maneuverings that threw up Ibrahim at the very last day for INEC to display the list of candidates, effectively blocking even the often-touted second option of Mimiko’s followers to withdraw into the cocoon of the Labour Party (LP), the platform they used to change the course of the state’s politics in an unprecedented manner in 2007, to fly the Jegede flag, is such that could not be relied on.

Like vultures waiting to feast on a carcass, other political platforms like the APC and the newly-resuscitated Alliance for Democracy (AD) are waiting in the wings to devour the remains of the PDP, a likely scenario if the litigation drags for the next two weeks.

But unlike the vulture, which by its nature is patient in the wait for its victims to complete the course of dying before devouring, opposition politicians are all over town with messages to aggravate the crisis of the PDP to hasten its demise.

However, out of the two “vultures” waiting in the wings, the APC too has its own share of internal crisis that has already divided the party down the middle.

Like the PDP, the immediate cause of the APC problem is rooted in the conduct of its primary elections in which Rotimi Akeredolu SAN, emerged in very controversial circumstances that reverberated in Abuja and threatened the very fabric with which the national party is held together.

Akeredolu was alleged to be a beneficiary of a rigged process that put Segun Abraham, the anointed candidate of the APC National leader, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, former National Legal Adviser of the PDP, Olusola Oke and Ondo North Senator Ajayi Boroffice at second, third and fourth positions respectively.

Irked by what he termed in an open letter as “undemocratic antics” of the party’s National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun in the handling of the primary election, but which many regarded as the peak of the Abuja clique in the party’s hierarchy to reduce his influence in the APC, Tinubu is said to be prepared to thwart Akeredolu’s emergence as the governor in Ondo State.

The APC candidate who enjoyed the support of Tinubu in 2012 when he emerged without a primary election and whose campaign was said to be heavily funded by the Lagos lord, has denied his former benefactor saying he was not responsible for his first voyage to rule Ondo.

Some anti-Tinubu forces within the APC, many of who are believed to be former cubs in his Bourdillon den, are also said to have found in Akeredolu, a weapon to demystify the national leader who has to prove his political might in Ondo if he desires to be relevant in national politics especially as the 2019 general election is concerned.

With his foray into Kogi through James Faleke as the governor of the North Central state effectively checkmated by the Abuja forces and the Ekiti and Osun elections coming before 2019, Tinubu is said to be exploring all avenues to make sure that the Akeredolu kite does not fly.

Although many are saying that his tactic is to use Abraham to secure a court injunction, with the support of loyalists within the Abuja powerhouse to stop Akeredolu, sources within the party’s fold disclosed that Asiwaju is putting his bet on the AD horse.

Apart from carrying the heavy burden of a waning popularity among an expectant but unsatisfied Nigerian population about the party’s change agenda, the crisis in the APC may prevent deny it the opportunity of winning the state.

As it stands, the two political platforms, which are supposed to have the advantages of state and federal incumbency, are being weighed down by a myriad of crises that the remaining time to the poll may not be sufficient enough to address.

From the dust of these crises came the AD, a direct creation of the APC internal wrangling, which has effectively become the third force in a race that was initially thought to be two-way.

Oke, the new symbol of the AD is a brilliant lawyer and consummate grassroots mobiliser who had paid his dues as a politician with massive followership across the state especially in his oil-rich Ilaje coastal area.

The lanky politician, who had been playing active politics since the period of the aborted Third Republic when he was a member of the House of Representatives, contested the 2012 governorship elections and came second to incumbent Mimiko while Akeredolu came third.

He defected from the APC to the new platform, which already had Akin Olowookere, an Akure-based property developer and one of the faces of new politics in Ondo State, as the candidate.

In what is believed to be an intervention from prominent regional leaders including Tinubu, who desired to use the platform to invoke the spirit of Yoruba nationalism that won the Southwest states in 1999, Olowookere was persuaded to relinquish the mandate for Oke.

And much like the Phoenix, the Greek mythical bird that rises from own ashes, the AD has been spreading to all the nooks and crannies of the state like wild fire in the harmattan within the little period of its resuscitation.

Analysts believe that the party is poised to reenact the feat of 2007 when Mimiko, within a four-month period, floated the LP, a party that was more like a mass movement of the entire population to defeat an incumbent governor that also had the support of Abuja.

Those opposed to the LP then argued that Ondo State cannot afford to be placed in the care of an “orphan” political party that had no parent in either Akure or Abuja and no sibling in any state of the federation.

As it turned out, they were wrong. The “orphan” party ruled the state and even got a second term before it took up a father in Abuja who incidentally died within four months of the adoption.

With the two platforms having their powers of incumbency suffering from internal hemorrhage, the stage may be set for another orphan to take over the toy of the state political authority. The next few days will however confirm the new direction.