…To Win The Governorship Elections
The PDP in Lagos for several years running has hardly been anything more than just an opposition to the APC in Lagos. Apart from the early years when it was much stronger in the state, Lagos PDP has largely been all noise no substance. It rarely gives the APC a run for its money in Lagos, especially in the last couple of governorship elections in the state. Every election year, the party goes to the roof top to tell anyone that cares to listen that it would win the governorship election and take over from the APC, but they never do. The election often always ends same way every time – the APC retains power in the state and the PDP fades away into oblivion only to resurface some months to another election to hurriedly put it’s house together again. And that has been the pattern year in, year out.
Many political analysts and sympathisers of the PDP have opined that the problem with the Lagos PDP is probably a lot more serious than many think. It is like a cancerous problem. It has eaten deep into the fabric of the party. On the surface, it looks no more serious than the regular problems other parties get to contend with every now and then. Intra party conflicts, a disunited leadership, over ambitious members, greed, etc. These are the regular issues parties often have to deal with. The only problem is, while other parties get these issues solved and out of the way to move on to other things, the PDP never moves on to other things, they are forever battling with the same problems every year. It is a house divided against itself.
Perhaps the biggest challenge with the PDP in Lagos has been that of effective, honest and visionary leadership. The greed for money has always torn the party apart. The story is that, every election year, they wait for money to come from the top hierarchy of the party, they share amongst themselves and expend very little percentage on execution of campaigns and the election proper. And this probably explains why the party has not been fielding very strong candidates in the state to take on the APC. Jimmy Agbaje is an accomplished pharmacist and a man who understands the dynamics of governing a state like Lagos. But as sound as he is, he was still not strong enough to wrestle power from the APC.
Even by their own not so high standards, the candidacy of Abdul-Azeez Olajide Adeniran popularly known as Jandor, was a weak one. He didn’t have the all round charisma and intelligence of Jimmy Agbaje. And he was never quite able to convince many that he understood the fundamentals and dynamics of governing a massive state like Lagos. He clearly has no experience in governance and neither does he possess ample experience of the private sector. Many analysts believe that, politically, he is a rookie and no matter what anybody says, Lagos State is not the place where political rookies test their wings. You will fail even before your political career takes off.
His choice of running mate couldn’t have made things any easier either. Funke Akindele, no doubt, is an accomplished actress, perhaps the most successful actress in the land today. But that is where it ends. Like her ‘principal’, she is also a political rookie. Jandor was hoping she would be able to translate her over two million followers on instagram to votes but that did not quite pan out that way. Majority of her followers on instagram are the young, glam loving kind of ladies, they don’t have time for politics. They do not have the temperament to go queue all day in the sun to get registered by INEC, go get their PVCs and then go line up out there again in the sun with their make up and expensive hair to vote for a governorship candidate. They don’t have that time. So, it never really looked good for the PDP. And to make matters worse, the Igbo electorates the PDP always counted on to help shore up it’s votes in Lagos now found home in the Labour Party, with their kinsman, Peter Obi, as it’s presidential candidate. The migration of the Igbo voters from the PDP to Labour Party totally left the PDP empty and desolate. No wonder its performance in the just concluded elections have been nothing but dismal.
And of course, they had their regular intra party conflicts even before the elections took place. The governorship candidate of the Labour Party, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour was formerly a member of the PDP. Indeed, Jandor met him in the PDP. But when it was time for the party’s primary, Jandor picked the tiicket while Gbadebo came second. He was expected to be Jandor’s running mate but to the chagrin of their leader Bode George and other leaders of the party, Jandor brought in Funke Akindele and insisted she was going to be his running mate. And from that moment, things were never quite the same with the party. And it’s performance in Lagos just showed that the party has totally lost it’s place of pride in Lagos politics. Now, it’s no longer second in ranking in Lagos, it’s now a distant third.
The problem of the PDP in Lagos didn’t just start today. Some former chairmen of the party in Lagos have also afdmitted the fact that the party is bedevilled with issues.
Immediate past chairman of the party, Adedeji Doherty said that imposition and selection had been the major setback for PDP, adding that they always created divisions and disunity in the party.
“In Lagos State PDP, the norm up till the last state congress has always been imposition and selection and this led to failure in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019. “Those of us that have been in the party for over two decades decided to come together and change the narrative because we cannot be doing the same thing, getting a particular result and believe that if we continue doing the same way, we will get a different result,” Doherty said.
Chief Bode George, the apex leader of the party in the state, also shared his own sentiments. He once revealed that there are moles in the part that often leak vital information and decisions taken in the party to the opposition. According to him, “we have people in the party who go to the opposition to reveal decisions taken in secrecy to the opposition. Immediately we meet and discuss critical issues, everything we say will be in the open in the next one hour. They will take it to Bourdilon and that always messes things up for us.”
It remains to be seen now how the party will fare from now on. It remains to be seen if they have learnt their lessons from their poor showing at the elections and if they will turn around the fortunes of the party going forward. This is the only way Lagosians can begin to take them serious again the state.
– WALE LAWAL
(08037209290)
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