Politics, Not Oil and Gas : Tonye Cole Gets Hard Political Lessons the Second Time

No living human being on earth has a monopoly on wisdom and insight. As the simplest among us would say, ‘Na try all of us dey try.’ Even so, there is a kind of wisdom that is acquired through experience. Neglecting this wisdom has all manners of implications, such as continued defeat and failure. This is a lesson that individuals like Tonye Cole, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State, have and are becoming more acquainted with.

The results of the Rivers State gubernatorial election was well anticipated. The main reason for this anticipation was the conflict between the incumbent governor, Nyesom Wike and his predecessor, Rotimi Amaechi. The second is the seeming conflict of interest between Wike and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Cole, the APC gubernatorial candidate, was caught in the middle of these conflicts and lost the governorship election to Wike’s party and candidate, Siminalayi Fubara.

Without question, Cole was heartbroken when he got only 95,274 votes while the PDP candidate got 302,614 votes. Although Cole has referred to the electoral process as fraught with too many inconsistencies and rape of democracy, it is clear that his loss is too overwhelming and not something that can be solved by adding even a hundred thousand votes.

 Political analysts have slammed Cole for expecting to win while never conducting an intensive campaign. It seems to these people that the co-founder and former Group Executive Director of prominent energy conglomerate, Sahara Group, does not yet understand the mechanics of politics, at least, not as much as he understands oil and gas.

This is the second time that Cole is vying for the Rivers governorship seat. It is also the second loss. Is he building up to become a professional gubernatorial runner-up or does he not yet have what it takes to win? Or maybe, as has been said by his detractors, he needs to take a permanent break and return to oil and gas.