Akin Osuntokun: How the PDP took over the South-west in 2003

by Akin Osuntokun

dsc_9698

It is said that when a lie is sufficiently repeated it begins to attain the status of truth. Egged on by a thoroughly brainwashed media, the APC grew increasingly incapable of making distinction between myth and reality.

In 2002 I was invited by President Olusegun Obasanjo to represent the South-west zone on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential campaign team for the presidential election the following year. Subsequently I was appointed the Director of Media and Publicity, spokesman of the campaign. I was thoroughly excited at the appointment. I had been looking forward to just such an opportunity to adapt and apply my political science education and knowledge to the reality and practice of Nigerian politics. In this aspiration I had been partially fulfilled in the opportunity provided by my journalism profession. I had served as columnist and member of the editorial boards of the Vanguard, Daily Times and the Guardian in particular.

My stewardship on the Guardian editorial board from 1996 to 1998 coincided with one of the most challenging political seasons in the history of Nigeria. The 1993 presidential election annulment crisis was attaining a climax and the countervailing nemesis of General Sani Abacha’s dictatorship was in full flight. The interlude was tailor made for the exhibition of political advocacy and I went at it with requisite gusto and missionary zeal; and took to it as fish takes to water. This was the immediate background to the full activation of my political career.

I was a member of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) (the story will wait for another day) when I was invited to lead the advocacy for Obasanjo’s reelection. The practical effect of taking up the duty post was my cooptation into PDP membership and I was not at all reluctant at this prospect. How could I? I was being given the centre stage to act the role my family, educational and professional background had uniquely prepared me for.

The situation got even better. Along with a number of friends particularly Segun Awolowo, Toyin Fagbayi, Femi Ojudu, Opeyemi Agbaje, Olisa Agbakoba, Sule Kokori Abdul and Femi Fani-Kayode, we had initiated a political movement in 2001, the Progressive Action Movement (PAM), directed at pressuring for a generational transfer of power from the pre 1966 recycled old brigade to a new emergent (younger) political elite. When I joined the presidential campaign, my principal, Obasanjo, second guessed this imperative and specifically directed me to make mention of his intention to mentor the younger generation (in my maiden national press conference; and that the relative youthfulness of the campaign directors was deliberate and intended to serve John the baptist for this purpose.

My transition from AD to PDP was equally made comfortable by the accord Concordia reached between Obasanjo and the AD\Afenifere caucus which had resulted in his adoption as their presidential candidate. Then the 2003 general election came. Prior to the elections, the AD was in total control of the governments in the South-west comprising Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Lagos, Ogun and Osun States. In large measure, the AD was a reincarnation of the dominant Obafemi Awolowo charted political tendency which had subsisted in the Western region since the formation of the Action Group (AG) in 1951. The tendency received a renewed legitimacy from the vanguard role it played in the struggle to validate the mandate won by the late Chief Moshood Abiola in the 1993 presidential election.

Perhaps on account of this formidable pedigree, the AD governors grew complacent and posted an unimpressive performance in the governance of the six AD-controlled states. This disappointment coincided with a change in the attitudinal disposition of the Yoruba towards Obasanjo-from alienation to incipient benevolence. Hitherto he had been the butt of a general Yoruba political disdain on account of a perception of him as a sell-out and self-hating proxy of Northern hegemony.

The political reform and normalisation measures he initiated especially the highly consequential depoliticisation of the military were regarded as progressive policies and earned him plaudits from a nation that had been laid perpetually prone to dysfunctional military interventionism. It is generally true of Nigerian politics that one man’s cake is another man’s poison. Thus the same measures estranged him from his conservative political backers from the Muslim north. Following the same dialectic, the fall-out with these backers was positively interpreted by his antagonistic fellow ethnic nationals as an indication that Obasanjo had broken free of his patron\client dependency on the north.

In the account of this transformation of perception and the laggard performance cum proprietorial complacency of the AD governors will be found the game changing predisposition of the South-west electorate to the PDP in 2003. The National Assembly elections came first and the outcome was as much a surprise to everybody as it was to Obasanjo. I should know. Prior to the elections we have had several conversations on the prospects of PDP in the South-west and he had no better hope than the party winning in one state.

There was no way an organised scam as wide-ranging as stealing the elections in all of the six states could have been mooted without me having an inkling of such. And it is counterintuitive in the extreme to believe that a potential rigger would make a bid for electoral heist of six contiguous states at one fell swoop, going from zero to all! Were those elections stolen there was no way the zone would have remained utterly quiescent as was the case.

I was in Ekiti State for the election and all conscientious citizens of that state would bear witness to the electoral outcome as authentic reflection of the people’s will. For those who persisted in disbelief and cynicism, last Saturday was their long-awaited answer and revelation. As God disposes, it was the same candidate who performed the feat in 2003 that has emphatically reaffirmed the authenticity of his victory. The repeat election of Ayo Fayose as Governor of Ekiti State needed the kind of overwhelming attestation to its credibility it received to be believable.

It is said that when a lie is sufficiently repeated it begins to attain the status of truth. Egged on by a thoroughly brainwashed media, the APC grew increasingly incapable of making distinction between myth and reality. It took all of 11 years but the reality eventually caught up with orchestrated disbelief. If only people could see beyond the window blind of political hypocrisy the truth would have begun to dawn on all long before now.

Any genuine seeker of the truth desirous of knowing what truly transpired in Ogun State in the 2003 elections need not look beyond the trio of Gbenga Daniel, Ibikunle Amosun and Obasanjo. Among these three personalities the victory of PDP in Ogun was specifically assured. If Ibikunle Amosun could win the state for the ACN in 2011 why then is it so far-fetched to attribute the same prowess to him in 2003 when he combined with the other two personalities to overpower Governor Olusegun Osoba? If he is not believed to rig to win in 2011 why is it unbelievable that he similarly did not rig to become Senator in 2003?

The incumbent governor of Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, was a major player in the PDP 11 years ago when the party won over the state. In a similar vein, if he could pull off the political feat he recorded in 2007 why is it difficult to believe that working together with other forces in 2003 he could fairly and squarely swing the state for the PDP?

Perhaps in the tradition of its pre-colonial Yoruba army settlement heritage, the unique attribute of Ibadan politics is the tendency for the emergence of a lone strong man, a political generalismo to whom the expansive megapolis defer. As it was with Adegoke Adelabu (penkelemesi) in the generation straddling the 1950s\60s so it became with Lamidi Adedibu in the fourth republic and it was under his benevolent tutelage that Senator Rasheed Ladoja was elected as governor of Oyo State in 2003 on the platform of PDP.

If anyone, without any ambiguity, can answer to the honorific title of strong man of Ibadan politics today that person is Ladoja. No one comes near him in electoral value in contemporary politics of Oyo State.

By the same logic of induction does it not stand to reason that such a personality in collaboration with other formidable forces like Adedibu would win elections in Oyo State regardless of rigging?

In 2003 and 2007 it was my charge, first in the capacity of the spokesperson of President Obasanjo’s campaign and latterly as Political Adviser to the President, to clarify and give perspective to nationwide general election. On the two occasions, but more so in 2003, I felt convinced and so argued that regardless of the imperfections of those elections they complied substantially with the wishes of the electorate. Maybe rather than 28 states the reality would be more in the region of 18 states in which the PDP was declared the winner of the governorship elections in 2007. May be the margin of victory attributed to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua would in reality be considerably lower but it is certainly beyond doubt that he won the presidential election in 2007.
The next governorship election coming up on the 9th of August in Osun State would go the way of Ekiti State in terms of transparency and credibility for the same reason that all available national instruments of ensuring compliance will be available for deployment. The contrary is also true-that when those instruments are spread and stretched nationwide we will not get comparable quality of elections.

Against this background the formulation for securing credible elections in Nigeria may go as follows-the probability of getting elections of high standards is inversely proportional to the number or volume of elections that are conducted on the same day. This formulation then gives the prescription of the need to deliberately fractionalise general election perhaps on zonal basis as deux ex machina, a remedial initiative for credible elections in Nigeria.

The supreme lesson of the resurgence of Ayo Fayose in Ekiti for all the pundits who called the Ekiti election embarrassingly wide off the mark is maybe there is the need for a little more detached objectivity and rigour in apprehending Nigerian politics especially in its localised context. Students of political science, in particular, will find it profitable to explore the surprise outcome of the election in terms of the elite-mass gap perspective. Maybe, according to the counsel of the late frontline political scientist, Billy Dudley, they will find it helpful to cultivate scepticism, rather than unexamined editorial certitude, as political virtue.

—————————

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail