Kogi Governorship Election: Why APC's Ododo must thank SDP's Ajaka

Chukwuka Ofoegbu, also known as Ijele Speaks, a security and public affairs analyst, has explained why the Kogi state governor-elect, Usman Ododo, should express gratitude to his strongest opponent, Murtala Ajaka, in the just concluded governorship election in the state.

During the election, Ododo, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), scored 446,237 votes to defeat Ajaka, the flagbearer of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), who garnered 259,052 and Dino Melaye of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 46,362 votes.

Speaking on the outcome of the election, Ofoegbu maintained that Ajaka opened the gate of victory for the APC candidate when he employed hate speech in his campaign.

He then posited that the governor-elect, Ododo, owed a bunch of gratitude to the SDP candidate while faulting the emergence of Melaye as the PDP guber candidate during his party's primary.

Ofoegbu said: "The SDP candidate put the death nail on his campaign the day he tried to recruit what, for lack of deep knowledge of the Kogi landscape on my part, the Okun zone of the state against the Ebira zone. Who on a campaign trail calls a huge portion of the state he wants to govern his enemy?

"Hate-mongering deserves to be punished in every election cycle if we must put an end to the consciously engineered divisions we have in the country. Not just in Kogi state. We have a generation devoid of ideological politics in our current political actors. Everything has to either be religious or tribal-based. Competence is never on the front burner."

"Nothing breeds internal cohesion than external threat. Hence the high turnout witnessed from the Ebira nation. Many of them changed their voting areas from across the country to make sure they voted in their home state.

"A new political ground game was born. The APC owes the SDP candidate a debt of gratitude for angering even apolitical individuals who ordinarily may not have bothered going back home, let alone voting.

"Add that to the PDP campaign (whose flag bearer never bothered voting for himself), which died the day aggrieved party members thronged to their headquarters to register their displeasure at what they termed a change of delegates list and were disregarded.

"It is difficult winning a fight with one hand tied behind your back, let alone two. Arguably, a rigged primary and a character considered a court jester by most political observers is a formidable combination. If your goal was to score less than fifty thousand votes. That was exactly what happened.

"The incumbent was observing and wriggling his hands as events were unfolding. While the SDP candidate relied on a campaign of hate and division to garner the votes, he went to work and carried out an aggressive grassroots mobilisation. His pocket was deep.

"The major opponents either have no political legacy to run on or, in the case of the SDP candidate, couldn't in good conscience convince the voters that he was a better candidate since he owes his strength to the same government he was trying to replace.

"The outcome was a no-brainer from the onset."