Dino Melaye: How tongue, 1 other factor might have influenced PDP's loss in Saturday election

Dino Melaye, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Saturday, November 11, governorship election in Kogi State, was defeated in the poll in a manner that was surprising to many.

Aside from being vocal, Melaye was a former House of Representatives Member and a former Senator from Kogi West, a credential that testified that he had a chance of pulling a strong contest in the poll.

However, the poll's outcome proved otherwise as Dino Melaye and his party, PDP, came far third with non-competitive votes.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Usman Ododo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the election after garnering the highest number of votes.

A breakdown of the votes showed that the APC candidate won 12 of the local government areas in the state, while his strongest opponent, Murtala Ajaka of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), won eight.

Leke Abejide, the candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), won one local government.

According to INEC, Ododo polled 446,237 votes ahead of Ajaka, who scored 259,052, while Abejide secured 21,819.

On the other hand, Melaye of the PDP did not win any local government but garnered 46,362 votes to emerge third in the election.

The outcome of the poll was surprising with the popularity of the PDP candidate ahead of the election.

However, the poor outing of the PDP candidate could be traced to two major factors, which are explained below:

Dino Melaye and the outgoing governor of Kogi state, Yahaya Bello, were once close pal before the former dumped the APC for the PDP.

During their friendship days, the former lawmaker in 2016 said "if you are fighting Yahaya Bello, you are fighting God."

Although the real reason behind the rift between Melaye and Bello was yet to be unveiled but the tongue is mightier than the sword, as they say. This major statement by the PDP candidate in the past appeared to be hunting him, particularly with his recent confrontation of his supposed “god’s preference” in the just concluded election.

Since Melaye stopped being in the same camp with Governor Bello, he has not been able to win any election, either for himself or for his preferred candidate.