One year after the last general elections in Nigeria, candidates of the various political parties who participated in the polls now have various stories to tell. While some candidates won out rightly, some lost gallantly and others had their fates twisted at various elections petitions tribunals across the country.
Some of these politicians have found their way into various public offices where they are serving the country in other capacities.
The presidential and National Assembly elections were held on March 28, 2015 while the governorship and state House of Assembly polls were held on April 11 of the same year.
The biggest political parties in the general polls were the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress.
The 2015 presidential election was a straight fight between the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP and Muhammadu Buhari of the APC. Buhari defeated Jonathan, the first time a sitting president would be unseated in the political history of the country.
While Jonathan’s loyalists were still protesting against the conduct of the exercise by the Independent National Electoral Commission and its declaration of Buhari as the winner, Jonathan had congratulated his opponent on his victory.
Perhaps, this was why no presidential candidate or party challenged Buhari’s victory in court.
Several political observers had hailed Jonathan, while describing his concession of defeat as not only creating the anti-climax needed for the already tensed polity but also preventing a repeat of the bloodshed that followed the 2011 presidential election when his opponent lost for the third time. Buhari had referenced Jonathan in his inaugural speech and subsequent speeches for allowing peace to reign by accepting defeat.
By that action, Jonathan seems to have won more hearts to himself, attending conferences and receiving continental and global awards.
Jonathan had won the Martin Luther King Human Rights Award, the first African leader said to have achieved the feat. Also, Jonathan beat former Lagos State Governor and National Leader of the ruling APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and a former Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Koffi Anan, to the African Leadership Magazine Person of the Year 2015. Others he defeated to win the award were the founder, ECONET Wireless, Mr. Strive Masiyiwa; Chairman, Heirs Holding, Mr. Tony Elumulelu; and President, African Development Bank, Mr. Akinwumi Adesina.
Jonathan had joined the likes of Liberian President and Nobel Prize winner, Helen Johnson-Sirleaf; former Ghanaian President, John Kuffour; Founder of Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Dr. Mo Ibrahim; Chairman, Honeywell Group, Oba Otudeko and lawn tennis superstar, Serena Williams, as recipients of the award.
In a letter to Jonathan, a former Pro Tempore President of the Liberian Senate and Chairman of the 2015 African Leadership Person of the Year Selection Committee, Cletus Wortoson, wrote, “There is no one best suited at the moment than Your Excellency to advise the continent’s leaders on the merits of good governance and enduring democracy. Your popular mantra of ‘one man one vote’ and ‘my ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian’ is a message that must be preached loud and clear on the continent, hence our endorsement.”
Unlike Jonathan, the majority of – if not all – governorship contestants who lost in the general elections challenged the victory of their opponents in court.
But no governor who won his election in 2015 lost his seat eventually. None of them was sacked by the Supreme Court. Although state elections petitions tribunals and the Court of Appeal had sacked the winners of the elections in Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Abia and Taraba states in separate judgments, the apex court had affirmed their victories at the polls.
The development, observers believe, is a departure from what obtained in the past where purported electoral victories were upturned by the apex court after an illegal occupant had occupied the office for years. This time around, the electoral disputes caused by the 2015 polls were resolved within one year.
Nevertheless, some of those who lost out both at the polls and at the courts are still licking their wounds.
In the case of the PDP governorship candidate in Lagos State, Mr. Jimi Agbaje, the last general elections turned him into a debtor. While addressing PDP members at the party’s secretariat on March 1, 2016, the governorship candidate insisted that he won the election even though he challenged the victory of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of the APC up to the Supreme Court and lost.
Agbaje said, “Some members were annoyed because the monies meant for the elections (which were allocated to the Lagos chapter of the PDP by the national leadership of the party) were not given to them to prosecute the last polls. I am angry too because the PDP won the last election in the state but was denied victory. I finish election, na gbese I carry for head.”
In Abia State, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance in Abia State, Dr. Alex Otti, also disagreed with the Supreme Court that Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of the PDP won the election in the state.
Otti, while speaking at a thanksgiving rally organised by the state chapter of the APGA in Aba, Abia’s commercial hub, in February noted that having accepted the Supreme Court judgment without minding its flaws, he still wanted the governor to succeed for the collective interest of Abia people. He however stated that he wouldn’t congratulate Ikpeazu.
He said in parts, “To Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, let me state unequivocally that we have nothing against him as a person but the system that imposed him against all democratic norms and practices, which attached more value to his ambition than to the lives of innocent Abians.
“While we have accepted the unpopular judgment that injures the sensibilities of Abians, we cannot congratulate you as that would amount to endorsement of criminality. So, rather than arrogantly demanding for unjust and undeserved congratulatory message from me and my party, the PDP should rather express remorse, seek repentance, and be humble enough to seek for forgiveness from God and Abians.”
Another governorship election that attracted attention was that of Oyo State where no fewer than five political heavyweights contested against one another. They were Governor Abiola Ajimobi of the APC who sought a second term, a jinx he eventually broke in the state; former Governor Rasheed Ladoja of the Accord Party; former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala, who dumped the PDP at the last minute to pick the Labour Party’s ticket; Sen. Teslim Folarin of the PDP; and Mr. Seyi Makinde of the Social Democratic Party.
After losing the election and failing to get the mandate through the court, Alao-Akala in December 2015 dumped the LP for the APC – the ruling party – one year after defecting from the PDP to the LP. This means that the ex-governor has been in three parties in one year.
According to those who have monitored the activities of the candidates over the year, those in the APC have been duly “compensated” by virtue of being in the party in power at the federal level, unlike their PDP counterparts.
For instance, President Buhari had named the APC governorship candidate in Taraba State, Aisha Alhassan, as Minister of Women Affairs when the Supreme Court was attending to the appeal filed by Governor Darius Ishaku against the judgments of the state tribunal and the Court of Appeal which nullified his victory. Although the apex court declared Ishaku as duly elected governor, Alhassan maintains her ministerial appointment.
It is a similar case in Rivers where the Supreme Court upheld the election of Governor Nyesom Wike of the PDP after the lower courts had nullified same. President Buhari had appointed his APC opponent, Mr. Dakuku Peterside, as the Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, an agency under the Ministry of Transport, which the immediate past governor of the state, Rotimi Amaechi, oversees.
Although the 2014 governorship election in Ekiti State was staggered and held much before the 2015 general elections, the APC candidate in the poll, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, had also been “compensated.” The technocrat, who was seeking a second term but was defeated by Governor Ayodele Fayose of the PDP, had since been named by the President as the Minister of Solid Minerals.
Speaking to SUNDAY PUNCH, the Chairman of the PDP in Ogun State, Mr. Adebayo Dayo, compared the party’s candidate with Governor Ibikunle Amosun. He said Mr. Gboyega Nasir Isiaka was more experienced to run the state than the incumbent governor.
Isiaka is from Ogun West Senatorial District which has not produced a governor since the state was created 40 years ago. He is a close political ally of former Governor Gbenga Daniel. In an attempt to succeed Daniel, Isiaka had earlier contested against Amosun in 2011 and lost.However, the Publicity Secretary of the APC in Lagos, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said there was no way Agbaje could have outperformed Ambode as governor. He noted that the APC had a blueprint in 1999 and since then the party had been presenting “good men” in Lagos; from Sen. Bola Tinubu to Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) and now Ambode.
“When we presented Ambode, some people wrote him off. Now, they have swallowed their vomit. The man is everywhere. Lagos has never been in short supply of good governors,” Igbokwe added.
Nevertheless, the PDP has insisted that despite losing the 2015 general elections, the party offered its best to Nigerians. The National Secretary of the party, Prof. Wale Oladipo, stated that it was the electorate who wanted a change and not that the PDP had nothing to offer them.
He said, “As of the time we were fielding our candidates, we were guided by our (PDP) constitution and, more importantly, the constitution of Nigeria. Jonathan was the incumbent President and he wanted to go for a deserved second term. The party had no choice, we had to field him. It is not about winning at all cost. We have learnt a few lessons from that and we have moved on. We have reorganised our party and we are providing credible and non-cantankerous opposition.
“The PDP provided quality leadership for 16 years but the electorate believed another party and candidate could do better and that was why they voted for a change. No matter the quality of our candidates, Nigerians wanted a change from what we were providing and they had gotten the change.
“The constitution of the country and that of the party were followed to the letter. If the process didn’t throw up the best candidate in any state, so be it. The most important thing is to follow the law. You don’t make your own law and start bending it to accommodate some people or to win an election by all means.”
Prof. Dauda Saleh of the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Abuja, blamed the persistent nature of maladministration in the country on the failure of the political parties to present the best candidates for public offices.
According to him, the choice of candidates is influenced by money and the best candidates do not emerge to fly the party’s ticket.
Saleh said, “The parties have not been able to bring out credible candidates because they are not ideologically-based and because they play money politics. What makes people important is not their integrity and character but money. At the end of the day, what you will have is still the old people dressing in new garbs. This has impacted on the quality of governance in this country negatively. As long as we do not have credible electoral process from the party level, we will continue to be faced with problems of poor leadership in this country.
“If you look at what is happening in America now, the candidates are not spending their personal money; they depend solely on donations from people, some of who give as little as $7 to support political parties and their candidates. In our own environment here, the parties are hijacked by moneybags and people defect on the basis that they were not fielded by their party; they move to another party without any conviction. These are some of the things that will make rain to continue to beat us in this country for a very long time to come.”
