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The year 2015 looks a distant two years away, but politicians of all shades and colours have started putting in place strategies to ensure their victories in certain geo-political zones. One of the areas being highly contested is the South-West, which for now, is largely in the hand of Action Congress of Nigeria. Will that matrix change?
| By Olu Ojewale | Jun. 10, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT
UNTIL Wednesday, April 17, Governor Isiaka Ajimobi of Oyo State, who was elected on the platform of Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and his predecessor in office, Rasheed Ladoja, who is leading the Accord Party, AP, were in a chummy alliance. This gave the governor confidence to appoint two members of AP into his cabinet. The AP had two commissioners, two special advisers in Ajomobi’s cabinet in addition to many others as chairmen of local councils and parastatals. But the accord broke down on April 17, when Ajimobi sacked Ladoja’s men and replaced them with his own.
The governor, in a letter he personally signed and delivered to Ladoja at his house in Bodija, said in part: “In the last few months, Ladoja had been breaking the tenets of the accord by casting aspersion on a government in which he was involved, through the participation of his nominees and proxies, which included his younger brother.” The two politicians had come together in 2007, when Ladoja, as part of the strategies to block the victory of his then estranged deputy, Adebayo Alao-Akala, in the governorship election, publicly endorsed Ajimobi, who was then the candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP.
Ladoja had, by then, dumped the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to form the AP, on which platform, he contested the election and thus became a nemesis to his old party. In the last governorship election, the ACN had won narrowly, with 420,167 votes while the PDP scored 386,480 votes and the AP, 275,151. It was the belief of some analysts that if members of the AP had not defected, the PDP would have won at the poll. At the state assembly, the ACN won 14 seats as against 13 for the PDP and six for AP.
To create a good environment for his administration to perform, Ajimobi went into an alliance talks with Ladoja. This led the AP lawmakers to join forces with their ACN counterparts to form a majority in the House of Assembly. In return, Ajimobi appointed some members of the AP into his cabinet. But the hitherto camaraderie between the two gentlemen has apparently broken down over their individuals’ ambition.
According to sources, Ladoja wants another shot at power in the state, while Ajimobi wants a re-election in 2015. But just as the former governor said recently, Governor Ajimobi appears to be naive in governance. For instance, about three months ago, some members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Oyo State decided to leave the party and pitch their tents with another political party. When words filtered to the hierarchy of the ruling ACN about it, Governor Ajimobi personally called the leadership of the disgruntled members of the PDP for talks. On the appointed day, the group was there early enough to meet with the governor, but after waiting for more than five hours, they only got a few minutes of the governor’s attention as he was about closing for the day. After apologising profusely, Ajimobi gave the group another appointment. Again, that appointment was not kept by the governor. To ensure that the third appointment would not fail, the governor directed the leaders of the ACN in the state to meet with the group. At that meeting, the leaders of the group decided it was no use taking the party serious.
Disappointed, the disgruntled PDP members then decided to listen to Adewolu Ladoja, former governor of the state, who had once governed the state on the platform of the PDP, but is now the leader of the AP. Thereafter, a date was set for a meeting with the group. According to Kolade Olalere, a member of the PDP renegades, Ladoja received them warmly, entertained them and fixed a date to formally inaugurate them into the AP. But shortly after, some members of the group started to receive threatening calls not to join to the AP. Harassed and intimidated with sponsored thugs and police, the almost 3000-strong new members of the AP had to disguise in order to get to the venue of their public declaration, on Thursday April 11. It took the intervention of security agents to save some of them from being killed.
As an astute politician, Ladoja is looking for every opportunity to get more people to his side. Realnews learnt that the AP has embarked on a massive mobilisation across the 33 local government areas in the state with the aim of winning the majority of local government areas in the local council elections. But it is also clear that the governor is not ready for any, council election for the fear of losing. On May 5, he extended the tenure of the current local council administrators he appointed by another six months.
Apart from the sour relationship with Ladoja, the governor seems to have created some problems for himself through his development programmes. Across Ibadan, the state capital, many structures had been demolished for beautification and road construction without compensation or giving any alternative accommodation to the owners of those structures. A great number of people who spoke with Realnews could not understand why the governor, in the name of development, displaced them without giving them any alternative accommodation. “It is a fact that most of the displaced traders use proceeds they make to train their children and for any government to displace them before thinking of where to move them to, is an act of wickedness. I believe it is only reasonable for the government to have provided alternatives before driving them from where they were. There is nowhere in the world that people can be happy with a government which, more or less, embarks on programmes that bring them heartache. So, it will not be out of place to say that in a matter of time, the Accord Party will hold sway in the state,” Ladoja said.
In response to the allegation, the government said there was no need to banter words with the former governor. Instead, it challenged Ladoja to show the people of the state what he achieved in four years as against what Ajimobi had accomplished in two years. Indeed, the current state government has succeeded in changing the face of the state, especially Ibadan. Unlike in the past, Ibadan is now clean and more orderly. The two-year-old administration has also turned Oyo State into one huge construction site with road works going on in almost every part of the state. The government has built more than 200 roads while the dualisation of roads in the state capital and many major towns is progressing steadily.
“We have employed 20,000 youths and have been receiving endorsements from those who matter in the society about our transformation of Oyo State from the rural town we inherited into a modern city, among other things,” the governor’s spokesman said recently. Although the governor has been generally commended for his developmental activities, there are apprehensions among the people in the state that he does not seem to be carrying his cabinet along. They also complained of lack of populists programmes to draw the governor to the people. Some people accused him of being tight-fisted and acting like a feudal ruler.
One of those against Ajimobi’s style of governance is Dejo Raimi, an elder statesman and former secretary to Oyo State government. While acknowledging Ajimobi’s effort in redefining Ibadan, he asked: At what cost? “The state government is doing well in making Ibadan very clean. He is reshaping Ibadan completely. But I have a grudge against Ajimobi. During the last Ileya, he did not give us rams. I do not know why,” Raimi said. According to him, “all former SSGs, governors, speakers are given Christmas baskets if they are Christians and rams if they are Muslims. Ajimobi failed in this regard.”
The 79-year-old doctor, who is also a PDP stalwart in Oyo State, told the governor to forget about re-election in 2015. “Such won’t ever happen. Ibadan people do not worship anybody twice. Ibadan constitutes 67.5 per cent of the voting population in Oyo State; so, the decision is about Ibadan. It is not about doing well. Would you say others before him did not perform? Will you say the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo did not perform? Historically, it never happened. Nobody has ever had two terms in the state. I hope Ajimobi knows this. If he wants to break the record, he has my blessing,” Raimi said.
Apparently concerned about Raimi’s statement, governors Raji Fashola, Raufu Aregbesola and Kayode Fayemi of Lagos, Osun and Ekiti states, respectively, said they were happy about Ajimobi’s urban renewal programme in Oyo State and promised to assist him to win a second term in office. The governors were in Ibadan on Saturday, May 18, to witness chieftaincy titles being conferred on Ajimobi and his wife.
If Ajimobi’s re-election looks uncertain, Aregbesola’s seems to be a certainty. His popularity among the populace appears to be strong, especially because of his administration’s transformation programme in the state. Indeed, since wrestling power from Olagunsoye Oyinlola in November 2010, the state has experienced some measures of development, based on the governor’s philosophy that, “if there is serious food production, hunger will be history, unemployment and poverty will reduce.”
That philosophy has been the cardinal objective on which the Aregbesola administration has anchored its programme. Thus, the administration has embarked on massive agricultural production, to make the state self-sustaining in economy and development. To facilitate easy access to farmlands and markets, the government has been opening rural roads, providing fertilisers and free transport to move farmers’ produce to various markets around the state and beyond, especially, Lagos.
In addition, Realnews learnt that the government has reached an agreement with the Nigerian Railway Corporation to ensure free freight of agricultural produce from Osogbo to Lagos. Similarly, the state gives to farmers, improved, high yielding seedlings free of charge and also gives them fertiliser at a subsidised rate. Besides, the state has cleared a dedicated 3,000 hectares of land for agriculture, including land for rice cultivation and empowered more than 1,000 farmers in the state.
Besides, the state is remodelling its education to meet the challenges of the present time. In a recent interview, Aregbesola said when he held a summit with a clear guideline on how to make education functional and beneficial to the society, he realised that most of the public schools in the state were constructed by the Obafemi Awolowo administration and they were built with mud and many of them were already collapsing. Thus, he has put in place a programme to build 20 high schools, each with a capacity for 3,000 pupils, 50 middle schools with a capacity for 900 pupils and 100 elementary schools with a capacity for 1,000 pupils, all in the next 24 months.
In a bid to boost the educational sector via technology, the state government will soon launch Opon Imo, a computer device known as tablets of Knowledge. Opon Imo computer device, according to sources in the state, has been programmed with all the necessary books, question papers, model answers of past question papers that would help senior secondary school students to pass their West African School Certificate examination, the National Examination Council, and the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board examinations. Already, no fewer than 150,000 of the tablets were said to have been distributed to senior secondary school students in the state. Grace Laoye-Tomori, deputy governor, said on Monday, May 13, that the tablets were designed and built to improve learning among secondary school students in the state and to prepare them for external and internal examinations. The tablets, designed in the form of an iPad, were distributed to the students, free-of-charge.
“Tablet of Knowledge’ ideology is uniquely designed by the current administration and the first of its kind in Nigeria. It is in line with best global practices to assist students’ preparation for their internal and external examinations,” Laoye-Tomori said. According to her, the tablet contains six extracurricular subjects including sexuality education, entrepreneurship, civic, computer education, Yoruba history, traditional religion, civic education and Yoruba proverbs.
“There are about 63 e-Books in the tablet and they are books which our students use in schools at SS1, SS2 and SS3 classes. The device also affords students unfettered access to textbooks. It makes teaching and learning exciting to teachers and students,” she said further. To complement that, the state is retraining all its teachers to help them meet the new development.
The state has also witnessed infrastructural development in terms of road construction, provision of some basic amenities like water, and paying transport fares for indigenes to come home during vacations so that they can help to bring businesses and investments into the state.
But for good or for bad, there are pockets of opposition against Aregbesola’s style of administration, especially opposition parties who would like to rubbish his accomplishment. For instance, the government workforce went on strike recently because of the government’s inability to pay of minimum wage as agreed by the previous administration in the state, even though the government pays salaries on the 26th of every month. Iyiola Omisore, former deputy governor and governorship aspirant on the platform of the PDP, has dismissed Aregbesola’s purported achievement as unreal. Omisore, who has been moving around the state, accused the governor of being wasteful and uncaring.
“A state that cannot pay salaries can afford to award contracts Federal Government roads costing N10 billion. It can afford to award contract for Western by-pass to unknown contractors road for N15 billion when the original costing was N10.2 billion. How can the state ask the governor who is a technician to go and deliver a lecture at Harvard University in America and in the process spend over N200 million of state fund to deliver the lecture,” he said.
According to Omisore, the governor has not also been sincere insisting. Western Region is known for western education and the preaching of Obafemi Awolowo was that education must be nearest to the people. School children should not be walking four or five kilometres to school so that they won’t be tired and there won’t be absentees. Aregbesola, in his own wisdom, has collapsed schools. So, you have to walk from Odeomu Gbongon to Orile Owu to go to school and that is about five or six kilometres.” He said there is no achievement to credit Aregbesola with in his almost four years in government. Be that as it may, Omisore, and indeed, the PDP, would need more than mere political posturing to convince Osun people that he will be a better alternative.
In Ogun State, the threat by the PDP to recapture the state from Governor Ibikunle Amosun is real. On Saturday May 11, no fewer than 2,000 members of the ruling ACN in Ijebu Mushin, Ijebu East Local Government Area of Ogun State, defected to the PDP. The defectors, led by Yemi Duduyemi, a former ACN chairmanship aspirant, defied the day’s heavy rainfall and converged at St. Mary Primary School ground, Ijebu Mushin, where they declared their loyalty to the PDP. They were received into the party by Adebayo Dayo, chairman of PDP Ogun State, and members of his executive. The defecting ACN members said they had to leave the party because they had been short-changed and sidelined by the leadership of the ruling party in the state. Dayo, in his address, criticised the Amosun-led administration, accusing it of executing projects that he described as “white elephants.”
Indeed, Amosu has done a good number of capital projects to help state grow and meet the economic needs of the people. He has built roads, including overhead bridges; helped to mechanise farming and sold fertilisers to farmers at a subsidised rate. In addition, the government recently supplied and installed two sets of rice processing equipment at Moloko-Asipa in Obafemi Owode Local Government and Ago-Iwoye in Ijebu-North Local Government Areas to boost rice production in the state. The government is said to be encouraging women and youths in agricultural activities.
Above all, education appears to be the cardinal objective of the Amosun administration. To that end, the state government is spending 25 percent of its budget on education. This helps it to give free text books and instructional materials to students in the state. Those in junior classes are entitled to seven books and those in senior secondary school classes get 12 books each. At the last official estimate, N2 billion had been spent on textbooks alone. The governor is constructing 28 model schools at a cost of N750 million across 20 local government areas, 15 of them are nearing completion. According to Olusegun Odubela, commissioner of education, “The dream of Governor Ibikunle Amosun is to ensure that Ogun is the best education-friendly state in Nigeria. And I want you to quote me, that none of us in this present cabinet will rest until this dream is realised to the letter.”
With the kind of programmes being embarked upon by the Amosun administration, one may be encouraged to say that it would be difficult for the opposition to snatch the state from the ACN. But with the likes of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Governor Gbenga Daniel still making waves in the PDP, it will not be easy for Amosun to get the kind of majority he enjoyed when he won in the 2011 election.
If elections were to be held in Ekiti State today, nobody should doubt the ability of Fayemi to win in a landslide. What seems to be working for the governor is not just his projects that have transformed the state from a rural setting to a model state in terms of infrastructural development and a conducive business environment, but also his sensitivity to the yearnings of his people, especially the youths and the elderly. Ekiti State is the only state in the country that pays senior citizens from 65 years old a stipend of N5,000.00 a month, which has helped a good number of them in establishing some petty businesses. It is also one of the few states in the country that have the backing of labour unions. The approval rating of the state workers was evident. When the labour leaders poured encomiums on Fayemi in last the Workers Day, May 1. Kolawole Olaiya, chairman of the Trade Union Congress, TUC, predicted a second term victory for Governor Fayemi in the 2014 governorship election based on what he called his “laudable achievements” since assuming office. He pointed out that Fayemi’s regular payment of salaries and minimum wage to workers, restoration of incentives such as vehicle, and housing allowances would win him re-election in next year’s polls. Olaiya similarly commended the governor for providing social security scheme for the elderly, purchase and distribution of laptops to teachers and pupils in public schools and renovation of dilapidated public schools.
The TUC boss also identified free health services, reconstruction of Ikogosi Warm Spring to a world class tourist centre, construction of a five-kilometre road in each of the 16 local government areas and merit-based appointment of permanent secretaries. “Reconstruction, rehabilitation and beautification of the state capital, Ado-Ekiti and the construction of many roads in the state is highly appreciated. The ongoing electrification of Ado town is highly commendable; you can walk and drive at night without putting on the headlamp and whereas it was not so before,” Olaiya said. Ayodeji Aluko, state chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, concurred saying the job creation scheme of the Fayemi administration had reduced the involvement of youths in criminal activities.
True to his promise, Fayemi has made the presence of his administration felt in every part of the state where development programmes are taking place. The state, according to the governor, “is now a huge construction site.” The schemes of the administration have been helped by the reinvigoration of the internal revenue generation base. At inception, the internally-generated revenue was estimated to be about N100 million monthly. Now the administration has, through the blockage of leakages and other devices, increased the revenue base to about N1 billion monthly.
Despite Fayemi’s achievements, his efforts are apparently not universally appreciated and even among some of his party members who are interested in his seat. One of his critics is Opeyemi Bamidele, a member of the party in the House of Representatives, and incidentally, one of the governor’s ardent supporters in his struggle to realise his gubernatorial mandate, recently expressed misgivings on the administration’s achievements. Bamidele had recently condemned the blanket endorsement of Fayemi by his colleagues in the National Assembly and some stakeholders. While Bamidele and his ilk could pose a threat from the ACN, a greater trouble could be expected from the PDP the main opposition, which is still trying to regroup and reenergise after being voted out of power in 2010.
Unless something dramatic happens to change the political climate in Ondo State, the state is solidly in the grip of the Labour Party. Governor Olusegun Mimiko has been able to gain the support of the people of the state with his immense transformation programmes since he assumed office. Mimiko was re-elected October last year. But the ACN and PDP candidates are still finding a way to upturn the victory which has now been stamped and seated by the Supreme Court. However, in terms of governance, the governor has done a lot for the state so much so that it would require a highly respectable and results orientated person from the opposition groups to push out the LP from power in the next election in 2016. The Mimiko administration has been able to distinguish itself in the areas of education, health, agriculture, infrastructural development and sports, among others.
The administration is reputed to have so developed public schools to the extent that, private schools have become less attractive. As statistics have shown, the rate of enrolment into public schools, which hitherto, had witnessed very low patronage, has now increased greatly. With modern facilities provided by the state government, primary school pupils in the state can compete favourably with their counterparts in Africa, Europe and the Americas. Apart from structures, the state also has put in place an agency which monitors both teachers and students in order to maintain high standard in schools in the state.
The government’s health programme has reportedly won for the state, in particular and the country at large, international recognition. Under its health scheme, some hospitals are designed for mother and child care. Under the project, pregnant women are taken care of free of charge from conception to about six weeks after delivery. The health scheme has become so popular to the extent that pregnant women from other parts of the country have been using the facility.
Apart from empowering farmers and young graduates to take to farming, the government has also established Tomapep factory in Arigidi Akoko. Another unique feature of the Mimiko agricultural project is that the Auga cow farm where cows are being reared in hundreds, to be able to take care of the cow consumption needs of the South west people instead of relying on supplies from the North.
For the first time in the history of the state, the Mimiko administration has been the first to have demonstrated seriousness in housing development. Consequently, it has built more than 300 housing units at Oba-Ile, and Oda road. In addition, the administration has a record of performance in urban development programmes, youth empowerment projects, road rehabilitation and construction, as well as sports development. All these programmes ensured Mimiko’s victory in the last election and may keep the LP in power if a right candidate is on the ticket.
There does not appear to be any problem for the ACN in Lagos State, where the party is solidly on the ground. Ahmed Tinubu, former governor of the state and the ACN national leader, will decide who picks the party’s governorship ticket in the 2015 elections. Besides, the party has a good record of performance since its assumed power six years ago.
It is no secret that the PDP wants to get back all the six states that make up the South West, but the possibility looks remote for now. But with the coming of parties being floated by Olu Falae, former presidential candidate of Alliance for Democracy, AD, and Fredrick Fasehun, founder of the O’odua Peoples’ Congress, OPC, is it feared that the South West votes may be so divided that the PDP may have a chance to regain some of the states. Falae is the national chairman of the Social Democratic Mega Party, which has 16 other opposition parties in its fold, while Fasehun has resuscitated the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN. Although Falae says he has a coalition of 16 parties under his umbrella, the party remains a local outfit without any national structure of note. Realnews learnt that he is likely to join forces with Fasehun’s despite the denial that he plans to do so.
When Realnews confronted Fasehun on the issue, he said talks were still going and refused to say further on that. On why he resuscitated the UPN, the medical doctor said: “The UPN is the only party in Nigeria that Nigerians were nostalgic about because it produced models like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Adekunle Ajasin, Ambrose Alli, G.O.K Ajayi, Lateef Jakande, Ayo Adebanjo and many others. It was the only party that had people-oriented and man-centred programmes.” He denied the allegation that he had been given a contract for pipelines protection by the Jonathan administration in order to divide ACN votes and help the PDP win in the South West. He said the OPC applied to the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, for the contract for the protection of the pipelines in November 2010 and that the application was acknowledged after two and half years. Fasehun said he had hoped that the project would provide jobs for about 50,000 youths across the country. “I am not in it for my sake. At 78, Nigeria has nothing to offer me,” he said.
The elder statesman said he decided to join the political train because there were no more progressives in the country. “I have always been genuinely progressive. What you have now are fake progressive people who mouth democracy while their heart is far from democracy. Their hearts and actions are anti-democratic. Leaders should be admired and not mired. But our leaders are mired because of their anti-people programmes. There is no happiness in the land. But you would not be a good citizen if you stay aloof, especially if you have something to offer,” he said.
Fasehun promised that the UPN would soon be registered and that a good number of people have rallied round the party to ensure its victory at the polls. Fasehun will need more than rhetoric to convince some Yoruba leaders about his project. For instance, Femi Okurounmu, a former senator and the leader of Afenifere, a Yoruba socio-cultural group, said when he was approached by Fasehun on the resuscitation plan, he was not happy about it. He said the purported plan to use the pipeline contract to fund the UPN so as to destabilise the South-West would fail.
“I don’t know why President Jonathan would want to give Fasehun or the OPC such a contract. But if the idea is to get Fasehun to work for Jonathan by resurrecting the UPN to destabilise the South-West, then Jonathan has misfired. I think the idea of reviving the UPN is one that is dead on arrival; that idea cannot fly. First of all, Fasehun was not a UPN leader. I was a member of the National Executive Council of the UPN, working directly with Chief Obafemi Awolowo. There are some other UPN leaders still alive today. It is only such people that can revive the UPN with credibility…When Fasehun came to meet me, I was lukewarm about his idea of reviving the UPN. They had already made up their minds before they started talking to people like us.
“They just want people to come on board. I didn’t believe it. It can’t work because a lot of the UPN loyalists are now either in the ACN or the PDP. And these people are not going to leave their parties just because Fasehun, who was not even a leader of the UPN, said they should come and revive it. It is an idea that is dead before it starts. Those who do not understand the South-West and are giving some money for the purpose of reviving the UPN are wasting their money. But I’m not saying Fasehun is being funded for this purpose, but if he is being funded for this purpose, then it is money wasted,” he said.
Holding a similar view is Ayo Afolabi, publicity secretary of the ACN, in the South-West, who dismissed the purported threats by Falae and Fasehun’s party as unreal. In an interview with Reaknews Afolabi said: “At the last election, Chief Olu Falae was a chairman of a political party, Democratic Peoples’ Alliance, DPA. It was one innocuous party. How many wards did that party win? And Chief Falae was the chairman of that. Dr Fasehun, during the UPN days with some of his colleagues, floated a Socialist Workers’ Party. And he never, for once, joined the UPN. He was never a member of the committee of friends of the UPN. So, what business has he floating the UPN? We are aware that Jonathan is throwing a lot of money in the South-West; he knows that the South-West people cannot be cajoled. So, he is throwing money at people with a view to distracting them from what is happening here. But our people are wiser for it, they will take the money and they will not vote the PDP. As far as we are concerned, the UPN is not a threat and can never be a threat.” He said the ACN was aware that President Goodluck Jonathan had attracted Fasehun with a contract for the surveillance of oil pipelines in the Niger Delta and mandated him to recruit 5,000 people from each South-West states to take part in the project, but the ACN would not be perturbed by the development.
On the possibility that the PDP may retake the South-West, Afolabi said the people of the region had become wiser based on the past performances of the PDP governments. Said he: “For the past 12 years or thereabout, the PDP had been in power in the South-West for eight years; what have they got to show for it? During the PDP era in the South-West, there were failing infrastructure, agriculture went into the doldrums, hospitals became consulting clinics with no medicaments to give to patients, education was at the lowest ebb in the South-West.”
For example, Afolabi said, during the time of the PDP governors namely Gbenga Daniel in Ogun, Alao Akala in Oyo and Olagunsoye Oyinlola in Osun, states, as one left Lagos, which was clean, and entered Ogun State, from Ibafo, and move to Ibadan, then Osogbo and even to Ekiti, one would notice that all the roads and cities were dirty with heaps of refuse everywhere. But things have changed since the coming of the ACN governments in the states. The environment is now clean and orderly. The ACN spokesman stated that the party’s governors who have been in power in the past two to three years have succeeded in engaging in urban renewal, infrastructural development and also introduced social amenities to the people to help them live a better life. “Everybody is happy for it. Our people have seen all the indices, agriculture has improved, education has improved and so is health. So, they have become wiser and I can assure you that our people will never, ever vote PDP again during elections,” he said. “Come 2015, we would be able, conveniently, to get the PDP voted out of power in Nigeria,” Afolabi said.
Although the PDP is regarded somehow as a threat to the ACN or the All Progressives Congress, APC, which ACN has subsumed under, the ruling party is also facing realities about its position. Tony Anenih, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the PDP, recently noted that for the party to do well, it has a lot of work to do. “We must not live under the illusion that our party is not vulnerable. Although, the existing opposition parties are still too small, fragile and sectional, we must not ignore the possibility that a merger of these parties may constitute a threat to our current dominance of the political terrain,” Anenih said. That dominance appears unlikely to extend to the South-West in any immediate future, but which party gets the ultimate crown of the people will be determined by the voters of the states, otherwise, there is no forecast that can really say for now what the end result may be in the region.
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