2023: The dynamics against Kwara governor’s re-election

BY ABU QUASSIM

It is now clear that the Governor of Kwara State, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq is beleaguered and besieged by various forces from different fronts. Unlike in 2019 when he worked with many key political leaders and forces to unseat the then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), his All Progressives Congress (APC) has become so dis-united that the real opposition to the Governor is from his party.

The O to Ge (Enough is Enough) mantra that was used by the Governor to chase the then ruling party out of power has been sabotaged, undermined, and rechristened O Su Wa (We are Tired and no longer interested) by the people. From every indication, it is looking like an impossible task for the Governor to get re-elected.

The story of the end began for Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq when instead of working to fulfill his numerous promises to the people he started a war of supremacy, vendetta, and family rivalry with the Saraki family which he and his supporters displaced from the control of the state with persistent propaganda, spins, and misinformation. The war, instead of helping the Governor to win more support, opened his flanks to attack from different quarters and exposed his lack of initiatives and ideas to make things better for Kwarans.

As if on a mission to impose a dictatorship and personal rule on the people, the Governor took the battle to all the key stakeholders who formed the nucleus of the O to Ge movement and helped him to realise his ambition. In one fell swoop, he pushed out the APC state executive members led by Hon. Bashir Bolarinwa (BOB) after they had helped to achieve his election. The party then broke into two with the BOB faction moving to set up another secretariat. All efforts by the national headquarters and leaders of the party from the North Central zone to reconcile the feuding factions failed.

The Governor did not help the reconciliation efforts as he alienated and publicly criticized, humiliated, and railed against top party leaders like Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, Sen. Gbemisola Saraki, Minister of State, Solid Mineral Development, Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, Prof. Oba Abdulrahim, former Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin and ex-chairman, Federal Character Commission (FCC), Hon. Hakeem Lawal, Alh. Yakubu Gobir, Alh. Yahaya Seriki, Alh. Yaman Abdullahi, Hon. Saheed Popoola, and many of the APC leaders in the state.

He followed up by using the primary elections for the selection of candidates for the 2023 polls to do away with many more of the party leaders. People like Sen. Yahaya Oloriegbe, Sen. Makanjuola Ajadi, and many others became his victims.

The calculations reflecting the unpopularity of the current administration in the state must have also been clear to the Governor except he is being deceived by his advisers or he has chosen to shy away from accepting the glaring facts. These facts are that the Governor who came into power on the strength of disinformation peddled against the establishment political group by the rainbow coalition which formed the O to Ge movement has seriously mismanaged the goodwill of the movement and lost the momentum due to his poor performance and failure to fulfill the various promises made by members of the coalition to the people.

Not only has he failed the people, but Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq also failed his comrades in the APC’s hate campaign against the PDP. He antagonized all the key leaders of the APC and forced them out of the party. Today, he is a loner with some Lilliputians. In real political terms, the Governor has less than one-quarter of the group in APC which came together in 2019 to work for him.

The original O to Ge – APC platform of 2019 has now broken into pieces such that a quarter is now populating Social Democratic Party (SDP), led by Akeem Lawal, the gubernatorial candidate. Another quarter is in the New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP) where Prof. Oba Abdulrahim (Oba Abu), another former APC chieftain, is the flagbearer, while a third quarter is in Young People’s Party (YPP) led by Yakubu Gobir, formerly of APC, who is the gubernatorial candidate. All these former allies are set to do battle with the Governor.

Even the PDP governorship candidate, Yaman Abdullahi, was an ally of the Governor. What this has done is to further open the governorship election to make it a five-horse race. The Governor’s party has split into four of these five platforms and one of the platforms has merged with the main opposition party, PDP. Incidentally, the main opposition PDP has not suffered any real encroachment into its ranks.

The solidity of the PDP platform as against the fractious and factionalized APC and the benefit it has enjoyed from taking in more and more groups of APC members has strengthened the former while weakening the latter. The PDP has continued to grow in leaps and bounds with more and more aggrieved APC members defecting to swell its ranks. In the same vein, many undecided voters and voters in the swing areas have decided that life is better under the PDP than what it is now under APC.

The above facts are well known to the Governor and his advisers or strategists as well as any discerning observer of Kwara politics. Their implication is that: the Kwara State Governor is in a fix. He must be looking for miracles that will bail him out and I am sure that such magical wands that can be waved to bail him out are a rarity in Nigerian politics.

Also, the Kwara State Governor has not done well in terms of the delivery of the dividend of democracy to the people. The administration has not initiated any landmark project, policy, and Programme which can set it aside from the previous administration. Many believe that, unlike the past administrations which discovered some talented indigenes of Kwara State and brought them into governance, the current administration makes it a matter of policy to appoint only people not known to have any experience, brilliance, and capacity into office.

The Governor is accused of running a one-man show in which State Executive Council meetings do not hold to deliberate on policy, review and approve contract awards as well as deliberate on issues concerning traditional institutions and local matters.

In Ilorin, there is wide talk about the Governor being a grandmaster of deception. It is said that while he gives the impression that he runs a simple administration and that he is a humble person, many believe that the opaqueness in contract awards and the influx of contractors from outside Kwara State to benefit from contract awards that can be locally executed are means of siphoning state funds and perpetrating massive corruption. It is also believed that the Governor is guilty of nepotism as many of the contracts are awarded to friends and family members.

What all this means for the Governor is that though he has six more months before the election, it may be almost impossible for him to get re-elected because it will mean his having to seek to rebuild the structures and goodwill that he has consistently destroyed over the last 39 months.

Quassim writes in from Kaduna.