That Sinking Carter Feeling

BY MAHMUD JEGA

In November 1980, at his first cabinet meeting a few days after he lost the presidential election to Ronald Reagan, US President Jimmy Carter opened the meeting with these words, “Let me start by announcing the results of the election. We lost.”

According to a Time magazine story at the time, Carter knew days in advance that he had lost the election. American presidential elections hold on Tuesdays and Carter had ended his campaign tour the previous Saturday. However, when his pollster told him that he was trailing in the polls, Carter decided to campaign some more on Monday. After his final campaign stop on Monday, he and his wife Rosalyn boarded Air Force One for the long fight to Georgia. As soon as he settled in his presidential suite, the pollster handed to him the final opinion polls. With only hours to go, it showed that Reagan had widened the gap. The election was lost. The pollster retreated, and the First Couple held each other and sobbed.

I do not know on which day Governor Gbenga Oyetola of the State of Osun normally holds his cabinet meetings. Or whether he intends to open his next cabinet meeting by announcing the results of this weekend’s election, which he lost to the PDP candidate, Ademola Adeleke, widely applauded in the social media for his dancing prowess despite his immense bulk. We do not know exactly when Oyetola knew that the election was lost. Was it on election night, or earlier, even though we have no reliable opinion polls here? If Oyetola does make an announcement at the cabinet meeting, will he announce with finality that he lost the election or will he allege rigging and announce an intention to proceed to the election tribunal?

There is a good reason in Nigeria why a candidate does not hurry to concede victory to his opponent. Oyetola has served only one term as governor so he is still eligible to serve another term. It is not unknown in Nigeria’s Southwest region to be booted out of Government House, only to make a triumphant return. In neighbouring Ekiti State, Governor Ayo Fayose was impeached and removed in 2006, only to bounce back in 2016. In the same state, Governor Kayode Fayemi lost his re-election bid in 2014, only to bounce back four years later for a second term.

All hope is therefore not lost for Oyetola, which is why he should not hurriedly concede to Adeleke. After one acrimonious local government election in my home local government in which two of my primary school classmates contested, I pleaded with Alhaji Garba Dandiga, who managed the loser’s campaign, to concede and not go to the election tribunal. Ever the wily tactician, Alhaji Garba said, “In Nigeria, if you lose an election, and you hurry to concede in the name of so-called sportsmanship, by tomorrow all your supporters will drift away to the victorious man’s house. They will say you are not a serious politician, that you only deceived them. But if you go to the tribunal, even when you know you have no hope of winning, your supporters will congregate in your house every day, you will eat together, exchange campaign gossip and then move together to the tribunal. Your opponent will also come with his supporters, and there will be pushing, shoving and exchange of insults. The good thing about it is that by the time the verdict is delivered, even if you lose, so much bad blood is created between the two camps that it is impossible for any of your supporters to defect to the other side.” Alhaji Garba is now deceased; may his soul find eternal rest in Aljannah.

Defeating a sitting governor, such as Adeleke did at the weekend, is an overall rarity in Nigerian politics. Since 1999, we have had roughly 216 governorship elections in Nigeria [i.e. 36 times 6]. Yet, one can count how many sitting governors were defeated in their re-election bids. They included [in 2003] Abubakar Audu in Kogi, Abubakar Hashidu in Gombe, Admiral Mohammed Lawal in Kwara, Rabiu Kwankwaso in Kano and Mala Kachallah in Borno. Five AD governors were dethroned in 2003, i.e. Segun Osoba in Ogun, Niyi Adebayo in Ekiti, Lam Adesina in Oyo, Bisi Akande in Osun and Adebayo Adefarati in Ondo.

In the following three years after the 2007 election, election tribunals threw out PDP governors Olusegun Agagu, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, Segun Oni and Oserheimen Osunbor in Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Edo. More recently, governors that lost their re-election bids included Ramalan Yero in Kaduna, Mamuda Shinkafi in Zamfara, Capt. Idris Wada in Kogi, Aliyu Akwe Doma in Nasarawa, Mohammed Jibrilla Bindow in Adamawa, Ikedi Ohakim in Imo and Barrister Mohammed Abubakar in Bauchi. I am not counting governors who were ousted in their party primaries, such as Chinwoke Mbadinuju of Anambra and Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos.

It is very painful for a sitting governor to lose his second term bid. Even though Oyetola still has four months left in office, he will find that his authority is ebbing away by the day. Every Osun civil servant, traditional ruler, businessman and politician will be trying to warm his way into the heart of Governor-elect Adeleke, if necessary by turning up at owambe parties and doing a break dance. A press secretary once told me that when his governor lost his second term bid, he found him sitting alone in his house, which a week earlier was very difficult to enter due to security and the number of people trying to see the governor. But here was the boss, still with several weeks left in office, but with no files in front of him and no one, not even commissioners or the once ubiquitous Accountant General, trying to see him. That is a Nigerian politician’s biggest nightmare, to see his courtyard empty like a freshly swept mosque.

Why did Oyetola lose his re-election bid? Some pundits thought that after APC nominated Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as its candidate in next year’s presidential election, it could not possibly lose an election in the South West. Oyetola is not only a firm APC man but he is Asiwaju’s nephew, yet he lost this race. Observers have already adduced several reasons for the loss, the most obvious being the nasty quarrel with Oyetola’s predecessor, Minister of Interior Rauf Aregbesola. Having made disparaging remarks about Tinubu trying to be a god, Aregbesola left the state before the election and quietly instructed his supporters to do “anti-party activity,” as we call it here.

There is reason to suspect that Adeleke did not lose the election in 2018. The poll was declared inconclusive and the run-off election that followed in some wards and polling units was very messy. APC pulled all stops, including locating polling units deep inside the bush while police allowed only voters cleared by APC chiefs to access the polling unit. Now that he has won, we don’t know what to expect. Many Nigerians think Adeleke will dance his way through the tenure, but those who know him well point out that he was a director of serious companies, including a power firm, and that he has many abilities in addition to dancing.

The most important question coming out of Osun however was how big a political and psychological blow it dealt to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. His biggest strategic worry is, wouldn’t Northerners begin to have second thoughts? Some Northerners will say, “This man to whom we conceded the presidential ticket, only to lose an election in his own backyard! And the governor who lost is even his son! They say it is because he quarreled with Aregbesola. Is this what he will do, quarrel with Pa Adebanjo, quarrel with Ambode, quarrel with many people and scatter the Yoruba vote?”

But of course the Osun election could be a political fluke. Tinubu was not on the ballot. Oyetola could have lost due to his own governance record and personal style. In any case, no election is exactly like another; as a voter it depends on the choices you have before you and the prevailing conditions. Since 1999, many parts of Nigeria have learned to separate their choices between presidential, governorship and other elections. For example, in 2011, CPC presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari won in Borno State by a wide margin, but his party recorded a dismal performance in the governorship polls a week later. That same year, PDP candidate President Goodluck Jonathan swept the South West states in presidential polls, only for the voters to turn around a week later and elect a string of AC governors. So, while the Osun governorship election has given some people a fright and has boosted other people’s confidence, the truth they must all remember is, every election is different. Governorship election is about state issues; presidential election is about national issues.