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MAHMUD JEGA FROM THIS DAY

Of the many political salvoes fired on the Nigerian political scene last week, one that most heralded the shape of things to come was fired by the freshly minted Governor-elect of Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti. Three days after he won the Abia governorship on Labour Party’s [LP] platform, he said in a television interview that he did not win because of the party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi. In his long acceptance speech, which was aired live on television, Otti did not mention Peter Obi’s name even once. It was puzzling because many analysts thought that Obi, who swept all five South Eastern states in the presidential election three weeks earlier, created a bandwagon effect on which Otti rose to power, but the former banker denied it.

Otti said, “In 2015 when I ran [for Abia governorship] under APGA, there was no Peter Obi. And we have it on our record that I won that election. At the time we were joining Labour Party, Peter Obi had not joined. It took a week before he called me and said that he purchased the presidential nomination form and he was coming to Labour Party… Peter Obi is a great addition to our campaign, but I can tell you that we won an election before in Abia without him.”

Several important political messages in there. Otti said according to his records, he won the Abia governorship election in 2015 even though it is outgoing governor Ikpeazu who was officially declared as winner. Either we accept official results or we do not. One cannot insist that he won the last election, when he was not returned, but gladly accept that he won this one, because he was officially returned. What if other losing candidates in the 2023 election continue to insist for the next four years that they actually won this election in Abia but Otti was wrongly returned?

All over the country, we saw this dissonance in the past month in the attitude of the major opposition parties. A party that rejected the results of the presidential election as rigged, nevertheless turned around and celebrated the victory of its Senate and House of Representatives candidates in the same election. Presidential candidates who were busy assailing the February 25 election as flawed were seen warmly receiving their party men and women who were victorious in the National Assembly elections that held the same day and time, by the same INEC, using the same BVAS, the same personnel, the same Electoral Act and the same election guidelines. I thought the two elections should morally swim or sink together. Either they were all rigged, or they all reflected the wishes of voters.

Probably the most telling observation in the governorship and state assembly elections of March 18 was the steep decline of LP. Its presidential candidate won 11 states and Abuja on February 25 but three weeks later, the party won only one governorship election. If Dr. Otti’s claim is true that Obi’s stature had nothing to do with his victory, then LP fell from 12 states to zero in just three weeks. Of the four major parties in the presidential election, LP suffered the steepest decline. I saw figures calculated by one analyst, that its votes fell from over six million in the presidential election to 600,000 in the governorship polls, whereas the total votes of APC, PDP and NNPP only slightly dropped. This was understandable because eight states and FCT did not vote for governors on March 18.