How Are The Mighty Fallen

We correctly envisaged last week that shocks and upsets awaited political parties during the National Assembly election held across Nigeria last Saturday, 9 April. The outcome of the election was a clear indication that some parties lost grip of their traditional strongholds, with heavyweights losing to little known candidates.

In Ogun State, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, took the people of the state for granted and paid dearly for it. The party paid for bad governance and failing to resolve its protracted crisis that has grounded the state for close to two years now. PDP lost all the three senatorial and three House of Representatives seats to the rival Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. One of the biggest casualties is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, who is not returning to the House in May. He lost the Abeokuta South Federal Constituency to ACN’s Olusegun Samuel Williams. The other big causality is Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, daughter of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. She lost the Ogun Central Senatorial District to Gbenga Obadara of ACN.

Former Governor of Osun State, Olagunsoye Oyinlola and serving Senator Iyiola Omisore also lost the Senatorial election in Osun State. Former governor of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani also lost his bid to return to the Senate. The lesson drawn from the election is that the so-called political leaders should not underestimate the emotion of the people or take them for a ride and expect to hoodwink those people for their votes.

Although the presidential election coming up this Saturday may be a straight fight between the PDP, CPC and ACN, the governorship and House of Assembly polls on Tuesday, 26 April may be a different kettle of fish entirely as there are likely to be more shocks and upsets.

Parties that didn’t do well in the National Assembly election may have returned to the drawing board to assess what went wrong. But it may be too late as the die is already cast. The electorate may have already made up their minds about the candidates to vote for, given the pattern of the parliamentary election last Saturday.

Voter enlightenment is so high now that politicians cannot deceive them anymore with empty promises. Politicians should realise that the time when they could easily rig election and keep themselves perpetually in power is over. Ordinarily, those who lost the parliamentary election would have rigged themselves back to power but for the transparent manner the election was adjudged to have been conducted nationwide.

The electorate must insist that their votes count in subsequent elections so that the vermin that had foisted themselves on the people since 1999 could be thrown out of power. The modified open secret ballot system of voting appears to have complemented the desire of the electorate to effect a change this time and to make their votes count.