WITH less than four months to the Kogi State governorship election and different groups and stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state endorsing Governor Idris Wada’s candidacy, it is easy to deduce that the governor, who is currently serving his first term, has the upper hand in the race for the party’s ticket.
PDP statutory delegates, PDP Elders Forum, Forum of Special Advisers and Kogi State Indigene in Diaspora, among others, have all endorsed his candidacy. But whether the barrage of endorsements will translate to victory for him at the poll scheduled for November 21 is a different kettle of fish.
The Forum of Local Government Delegates, made up of members of the executive councils of local governments in the state have since endorsed Wada with a vote of confidence it passed on the governor. Group leader, Idris Atabor Waja, said the decision to endorse him was borne out his achievements in the last three and a half years.
Waja said: “In spite of human, financial and other challenges, Governor Wada has been able to make giant strides in the area of infrastructural development. One of such strides is the ongoing construction of the School of Medicine in the Kogi State University, the Odu General Hospital, Dekina, among others.
“It is against this backdrop that we deem it necessary to publicly pass a vote of confidence on the governor and to say that we have tested him in the last three and a half years and he should be allowed to continue to fly the flag of our party to contest the coming governorship election in the state.”
Atabor, who said the party failed at the last general election because of the activities of political prostitutes in its fold, said the party will regain its place in the next governorship election in view of the ‘political evangelism’ that had been embarked on to revive the party in the state.
“To this effect, the party has constituted a five-man committee for each polling unit. The committee, like religious evangelists, will embark on house-to- house sensitization to win members back to the party. We failed because some of our members were political prostitutes, taking vital information out and revealing our strategies to our opponents,” Atabor said.
But the worth of Atabor’s olive branch to party members, who according to him engaged in anti-party activities during the general election, to the effect that they have been forgiven, can only be assessed after the governorship election. For now the reality on the ground is indicative of anything but the return to the party of earlier defectors described by Atabor as political prostitutes.
The Kogi State Indigene in Diaspora, which has also joined the endorsement train, said during a press conference organised by Consolidation Group that Wada is the party’s only credible choice for the November governorship election. The convener of the group, Arc. Isimi Baba, said: “Capt. Wada has done well within a difficult economic situation. Amidst difficult financial challenge, the governor has been able to manage the payment of salaries to workers in the state as well as achieve ground breaking progress in infrastructural development.”
In spite of the endorsements however, Wada faces an uphill task in his bid to retain his seat. Unlike the easy ride he had in the 2011 election, the tides appear to have changed remarkably after the wind of change that blew across the state during the last presidential and National Assembly elections. In the said elections, the All Progressives Congress did not only win the presidential race by a wide margin, it also swept the three senatorial seats and six out of the nine seats in the House of Representatives.
With the APC at the helm of affairs at the national level and the PDP in the saddle in the state, observers are quick to conclude that the election bodes the father of all battles.
Incidentally, the PDP had wrestled power from the opposition in 2003, when the immediate past governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, defeated the then incumbent governor, Prince Abubakar Audu of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). As things have turned out, Audu remains a factor in the current governorship race. As the undisputed leader of APC in the state and a governorship aspirant on the party’s platform, Audu has become the Achilles heel the PDP must be wary of.
The defeat the PDP suffered in the hands of the APC in the March 28 presidential and National Assembly elections was the first of its kind since it took the baton of leadership in 2003. Muhammadu Buhari of the APC polled 264,851 votes to defeat the PDP’s candidate, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who then was Nigeria’s incumbent president. Jonathan got 149,987 votes. The APC also won all the three Senate seats and six out of the nine House of Reps seats, conceding the remaining three to the PDP.
The outcome of the March 28 polls was a reversal of the trend of elections in the state since 2003 when PDP at various elections had managed to dominate winning the three senatorial slots and virtually all the House of Representatives seats with the exception of one in 2003 and two in 2011. The PDP also has 20 out of the 25 state House of Assembly seats in the last legislature against the 14 it managed to garner at the last outing.
The latest trend no doubt jolted the PDP family and left many political analysts to see it as a sign of what to expect at the governorship poll.
The gale of defections by PDP bigwigs from the East and West senatorial districts to the APC has also not helped matters for the incumbent governor. The trend is similar to the one witnessed in the run up to the 2015 general elections when two former speakers led PDP defectors to the APC in January. The task is becoming more daunting for Governor Wada and his supporters, so much that not even the most optimistic of Wada’s supporters is willing to wager that he will be returned.
After the presidential election, the PDP in the state has made serious effort to bounce back. But pundits say the outcome of the House of Assembly election, where it secured a slim majority, is no good omen for the party.
Still smarting from their loss at the presidential poll, both the leaders of Kogi PDP and their followers had gone back to the drawing board, and two weeks after, achieved a marginal success by winning 12 out of the 25 seats in the State House of Assembly election. The APC got seven while INEC declared the remaining six inconclusive. At the end of the rescheduled State House of Assembly election, the PDP had 14 seats and APC 11.
A look at the House of Assembly election showed that the joy of the PDP was short-lived in view of the outcome of the elections in the six constituencies earlier declared inconclusive. Two the four areas where the PDP lost were Dekina 1 and Dekina 2 where the governor hails from.
And while Wada rode on the wing of his predecessor, Ibrahim Idris, to the Lugard House, there are rumours of strained relationship between them, which may deduct from the former’s fortune. The influence of workers in the state, which weighed in favour of Wada against his then
opponent, Prince Abubukar Audu during the 2011 contest, is also believed to have waned as teachers and local government workers have had a rough deal under the present administration.
As things stand, the Kogi governorship election is for the APC to win, but Wada stands to benefit from the internal crisis that is brewing within the latter. The high number of governorship aspirants is threatening to turn the party into a theatre of war.
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