With the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announcing the final results in Ekiti State on Sunday after elections a day earlier. The final results records that the three leading parties in the Saturday’s gubernatorial race scored 203,090 votes for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Mr. Peter Ayodele Fayose; 120,433votes for All Progressives Congress (APC) incumbent Governor John Kayode Fayemi and a paltry 18,135 votes for Labour Party (LP) Opeyemi Bamidele. With PDP sweeping every single Local Government Area (LGA), when it was the APC that purportedly holds the broom calls for serious political reconsiderations as the nation closes in for 2015.
It is on record that the elections were free, fair and credible and the outgoing Governor Fayemi has already handed in his concession speech and the Governor-Elect Fayose has duly accepted it and has promised to work with everybody for the progress and interest of the state. The build up to the governorship election was expectedly tense, but credit must be given to INEC and the security apparatus for conducting a hitch free exercise. In a contest there must be winners and losers, but it is a double tragedy if a loser decides to be a terrible loser hence it is highly praiseworthy the political maturity of Fayemi which is rare in our nation’s politics. It proves that the young man was never an accident in public office, and Nigerians may likely see more of him in future.
However, while the news from Ekiti may subsist across the nation’s political landscape for some days ahead, it is instructive to observe that the political fever may already be reverberating in neighboring Osun state as the incumbent APC Governor Engr. Rauf Aregbesola prepares to defend his mandate against another charismatic PDP challenger Senator Iyiola Omisore who was a former deputy governor of the state. The elections have been fixed for 9th August, 2014 by INEC.
The Ekiti setback should get the APC leaders back on their drawing board as their message for change hasn’t been fully bought by Nigerians. Before Saturday’s elections in Ekiti, the tempo on social media and blogs painted the impression that it will be a one-way traffic in favor of Governor Fayemi. But the emphatic statement coming from Ekiti is crystal clear that huge followership on social media or bloggers don’t secure victory but people with voters’ card. Now if this political tsunami sweeping through Ekiti should echo in Osun in a few months’ time, then it should provoke questions among high ranking APC leaders and followers if Senator Bola Tinubu is still the right man to lead the south west into next year’s Presidential elections. The saying goes that a leader who has no followers queuing behind him is only taking a walk.
Also as the new National Chairman of APC Chief John Odigie-Oyegun immediately on assuming office called on President Goodluck Jonathan to draft his handover note ahead of 2015, it will be sagacious if the party instructs its flag bearers for next year’s elections to also retain a probable prospective draft copy as last Saturday proved that PDP still appeals to most Nigerians irrespective of the criticisms the party is subjected to on social media. If Ekiti should be rightly adjudged as a test-run on the peoples’ views concerning both major parties in the country ahead of 2015, then it will be naive to pronounce PDP as dead and buried since the party has proved that a comeback is always possible no matter how late into a match it might seem.
Lastly, the social media and twitter warlords sympathetic to the cause of APC have been expectedly quiet since the news filtered in since Saturday night that PDP candidate Fayose was coasting home to a famous victory. This deepening silence on the part of some sections on major social media activists and bloggers proved that the social air waves was unfairly subjected as a propaganda tool for unequal projection forand against each side.It is never too late for players in the social space to immediately return this platforms to its’ rightly purpose which is to promote truth and healthy competition. Nobody should subject supporters of any party or cause to abuse and insults as the beauty of democracy was displayed at its best in Ekiti last Saturday where the minority will always have their say, while the majority will rightly have their way.
Diana-Abasi Alphonsus Udoh
A public affairs analyst and commentator write from Copenhagen, Denmark