HOW THE RIVERS GUBER ELECTION WAS WON AND LOST

By Caleb fubara

“Fortune detests a niggard. Her favours are reserved for the man who knows how to spend nobly and to stake boldly.”
-Rafael Sabatini

The much anticipated second leg of Nigeria’s general elections, which is the gubernatorial and state Houses of Assembly have finally come and gone. But the dust it raised is still to settle. Originally scheduled for March 11, a fortnight after the presidential and national assembly elections, its postponement to March 18, no doubt generated mixed feelings in the polity; except that in Rivers State, it came like a contest whose outcome had long been foretold, with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) clinging the coveted prize. Once again, affirming Gov. Ezenwo Nyesom Wike as the man of the moment.

In the build up to the campaigns, it was a strongly held opinion, taking a cue from past antecedents that the governor was incapable of anointing a successor for the state. An opinion that would later become a mantra among supporters of the SDP. As a matter of fact, the SDP gubernatorial candidate, Sen. Magnus Abe was exceedingly emphatic that no governor before Wike had succeeded in planting a successor, and such Wike wasn’t going to be any different. But there is more to winning an election than flawless rhetoric.

Dr. Peter Odili was one man who came close to achieving the feat, but a disagreement between him and Mr. Rotimi Amaechi before the ship could berth turned a soured bite in between that meal. Amaechi himself fell far short of delivering Dr. Dakuku Peterside as his successor in 2015. Neither Chiefs Melford Okilo nor Rufus Ada-George had the luxury of serving out an eight-year term. So theirs was a different kettle of fish.

In any case, those who still wonder how Gov. Wike came to break this seeming jinx only need to be guided by the opening quotation. It follows therefore that the howling of rigging the gubernatorial election in Rivers State holds no water as the indices to the PDP winning a landslide were clearly unmistakable.

To appreciate how the Rivers PDP was able to win landslide in the March 18, guber polls, one only have to take a dispassionate appraisal of the following factors. It is however instructive to note that Rivers State has been a PDP stronghold. And that the party has since 1999 won the Brick House.

Much as the other political parties deserved mention for their showings, I would rather limit myself to the PDP and her two runners up-the APC and SDP in this post mortem evaluation. Again, it is instructive to point out that the contest would’ve been a two horse race between the PDP and the APC except that the SDP entered the contest as some sort of a third force.

In an earlier post entitled: Sim and the Competitive Advantage, I had posited inter alia: that “the people have consistently voted the candidate who possesses the constitutional requirements, has a track record of service and competence, balances the Rivers fault lines, and is presented by the party with majority of Rivers people”. In other words, Rivers people have at all times elected their governor based on the fundamentals enumerated above. I went further to state that “on the contrary, whatever hinders a candidate’s first attempt at Brick House becomes his albatross. It even looms larger in subsequent attempts, thus qualifying the candidate as a serial guber hopeful”.

Interestingly, this in-depth observation rang through with the election of Amaopusenibo Siminialayi Fubara of the PDP. Whereas candidates of the APC and SDP met the constitutional requirements to run for the office of governor, and also do have their track record of service, running against the PDP in Rivers State short of any major dislocation in the party is to say the least, an exercise in futility. And since neither of them was running for the first time, it implied they failed to appreciate the Rivers fault lines which their candidacies were up against. For instance, aside struggling to ingratiate himself and gain the people’s acceptance, Arc. Tonye Cole of the APC hails from the Rivers West senatorial district that produced Dr. Peter Odili as governor in 1999. On the hand, whereas Sen. Magnus Abe of the SDP hails from the Rivers South-East senatorial district which should ordinarily produced the next governor, his candidacy was somewhat hamstrung by the upland/riverine consideration. That, too, is a fault line. And trying to gloss over it amounts to living in self denial. Again, it would appear the people, even the Ogonis, gleaned a subtle sense of “emi lokan” conceitedness in his outing.

Another factor that buoyed the PDP to victory is the Wike legacy as governor. There is no gainsaying that Wike became governor with little or no goodwill. But the man got into office and warmed himself into the people’s heart. In fact, there is a thing about Wike’s outing as governor that seems to confound the opposition in the state. First, it was Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President of the Federal Republic who announced Gov. Wike as Mr. Project. That was in the course of his first term as governor. And as if that wasn’t enough accolade coming from the opposition, President Muhammadu Buhari took it a step further to decorate Gov. Wike as the country’s most outstanding governor.

That was the people’s General who led the PDP campaign train across the 23 LGAs of Rivers State. It also didn’t come as a surprise that all through the campaigns, Gov. Wike kept thumping his chest as having delivered. And that he could trust the man coming after him to consolidate, as well as improve on the gains recorded. Somehow his boast completely drown the opposition’s grumblings of what he didn’t do right.

Besides giving Port Harcourt a facelift, Wike could count at his fingertips projects his government had executed in virtually every community in the state. He kept asking what the opposition would campaign with. His performance, aptly captured in that soul-gripping jingle, “Rivers people, we dey see am, Wike dey work ooh…” literally made the work easy for the PDP. It all combined to make the opposition engage Gov. Wike and his party from the point of trepidation. In Wike, the PDP had his campaign cut out. And winning a sure bet.

Despite his intimidating selling points, Wike would still not rest on his oars. For a man who is determined to win election, reaching out to the opposition camps and winning over more hands was a task he dedicated himself to. Even when the opposition posed no visible threat, Wike’s PDP continued to harvest every seasoned politician of note that was still on the other side. Unlike the APC leader who once boasted to winning elections with three hundred supporters.

Meanwhile, an ambition that was muted in the PDP, traumatized in the APC, but barely found an eleventh hour expression in the SDP kept mounting the soapbox to eulogize its ingenuity to be on the ballot. Refusing to reconcile and allay the fears foundation members of the SDP who believed their party was hijacked for the singular purpose of realizing a gubernatorial ambition. How can a party that entered into election so sharply divided continue to carry on in subterfuge?

Mr. Rotimi Amaechi had once boasted to his supporters and rightly so, that the 2023 guber election in the state was a battle between him and Wike. Whether he forgot this chest thumping, or he was just untrue to his party’s candidate, I wouldn’t know. But like the five foolish virgins, Amaechi allowed his political machine to run out of steam, and went into hibernation. But just when the electorate had concluded the ‘lion’ had abandoned Tonye Cole as he did to Dakuku Peterside in 2015, and the elections barely a week away, out of the blue, the APC leader appeared, only to drink from a poisoned chalice known as the Igbo votes.

Regrettably, the man who doesn’t drink got so drunk that he began to pontificate on “Abandoned Property” as his joker. He forgot that the bulk of those he was trying so hard to masturbate with the ghost of “Abandon Property” were neither children nor grand children of those affected. He pretended to forget that the so called “Abandoned Property” is a sour fault line in the Rivers political history. It was such a disaster that in want of the Igbo votes, Amaechi unwittingly campaigned against Rivers people. Meanwhile, professional endorsers were busy pledging same Igbo votes to the SDP and the rest other parties. Yet the Igbos knew better than split their votes between two losing ends. So neither the APC nor SDP secured the Igbo votes in the long run.

There was also the Tinubu matrix in the mix. From the outset, Wike was clear on what should happen in the Presidential election. He simply couldn’t stomach the presidency remaining in the north, eight years after Buhari’s presidency. He matched word with action and got Tinubu delivered in Rivers State. On the contrary, Amaechi, who didn’t hide his disdain over Tinubu’s emergence went to work (though surreptitiously) with Atiku Abubakar. The same can be said of Sen. Abe, who, for fear of losing the Igbo votes, downplayed his earlier professed support for Tinubu. In other words, if Tinubu’s victory was a morale booster for Wike and the PDP, it certainly wasn’t so for the APC or SDP.

Conclusively, the opposition and all the press conferences alleging intimidation and all what not need only to turn to Abia, our neigbouring state, to purge themselves of the lamentations. For every contest produces a winner and a loser.