The Front Runners For Lagos Senate Race

It’s Election Day in Lagos and the rest of Nigeria tomorrow.

As expected the Action Congress, in dominance of the state affairs for the past 12 years, is expected to carry the day.

The party’s candidates for the National Assembly polls are expected to coast home to victory in almost all the constituencies, going by the recent gains recorded by the party, with the decampment of many prominent members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party.

But according to political pundits, the party will have pockets of resistance in some local council areas, such as Eti-Osa, where there have been damaging campaigns that voters should reject the Action Congress candidates because of the expectation that tolls would soon be imposed on the Lekki-Epe Expressway.

The Action Congress also faces the usual antagonism from Ibeju-Lekki, where it had conceded some grounds in the past elections.

As P.M.News learnt, enthusiasm for tomorrow’s polls may not be as much as the one to be displayed in the presidential election and the final poll on 16 April, the governorship election. Thus, it is being speculated that voter turn out may not be very high.

But as P.M.News learnt, the major parties in the race for various national legislative seats tomorrow are not leaving anything to chance in ensuring that the voters are mobilised to perform their civic duties.

In grassroots mobilisation, the Action Congress again has some advantage over its rivals, as it maintains a peerless structure at all local levels.

Tomorrow, however, all eyes will be on the three senatorial races in the state.

In Lagos west, Senator Ganiyu Solomon, former chairman of Mushin Local Government and a former member of the House of Representatives is expected to win re-election by a large margin as his rivals are little known. Gbenga Ashafa, a former permanent secretary is fighting for the ticket in Lagos East. Apart from the obstacles he could encounter in Ibeju Lekki, he is also the clear favourite.

In Lagos Central, Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu is the clear favourite over the male rivals, Animasaun of the PDP and Dapo Durosinmi Etti of the Labour Party. Etti was a confidant of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the association has been beneficial to the extended Etti family, in terms of appointments in important positions in the state.

Animasaun was a former permanent secretary in the Lagos state service, who was forced to retire in some controversial circumstances under the administration of Asiwaju Tinubu.

Some of their campaign themes have been denigratory of the womanhood that Mrs. Tinubu represents, as if a woman has nothing to offer in the legislative house in Abuja.

But Mrs. Tinubu has gone about her campaign mentioning her various public interventions, such as the setting up of an alternative school for girls, the spelling bee competition, an innovative competitive programme for children of public schools, which leads to the production of a Governor-For a day winner.

She has spoken of her yearly wheel chair tennis competition for the disabled in the society and the New Era Youth Camp for young ones. A lot of these programmes, which have endured and which have earned her a national honour, were started when Mrs. Tinubu’s husband was in office.

It’s a clear tribute to Remi’s organisational ability and sense of duty and responsibility that she has kept all the programmes alive, four years after, when a lot of programmes initiated by contemporary First Ladies have been consigned to the dustbin of history.