After Osun, Opposition Parties Will Go Into 2023 Elections With High Hopes

Forum 1 year ago

After Osun, Opposition Parties Will Go Into 2023 Elections With High Hopes

IN 2018, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate Adegboyega Oyetola needed a re-run, after the main election had been declared inconclusive, to defeat Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flagbearer Ademola Adeleke.

Four years later, in 2022, there was no need for a re-run, but still, power changed hands – the incumbent APC administration lost to the opposition PDP.

The Osun State governorship election held on July 16, 2022, was just one of the few cases where the incumbent failed to win re-election since the return to democratic rule in Nigeria in 1999.

And it was largely unexpected, despite PDP candidate Adeleke’s considerable popularity among the Osun electorate. There were fears that the ‘power of incumbency’ and ‘federal might’ – two factors that have hitherto proved very influential in Nigerian elections – would be decisive in determining the outcome of the poll.

The fears came to the fore when, some hours before the announcement of the final result on June 17, protesters stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) collation centre in Osogbo, the state capital, to demand that the election should end on first ballot. The protesters were worried about a repeat of what happened in 2018, when the election was declared inconclusive with Adeleke reportedly in the lead.

Responding to the protests, Supervising INEC National Commissioner for the election, Kunle Ajayi, a professor, assured that the election would end on first ballot.

INEC lived up to the promise, and the ghost of 2018 was buried when Adeleke was declared winner of the election. Oyetola’s victory following the controversial 2018 re-run was a very narrow one – he won the governorship election by scoring a total of 255,505 votes, while Adeleke got 255,023 votes. A difference of just 482 votes.