Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa’s may be the slimmest margin of win in a governorship election. He polled 106 votes more than his opponent to be returned as elected in Kaduna state in 2011. That is our democracy and that is the rule. A simple majority and the required percentage of votes in two-thirds of local government areas in a state will suffice.
In Sokoto state, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal nearly broke Yakowa’s record this year. With 342 votes, he has won the governorship race after a supplementary election that was viewed in many quarters as unlawful and unnecessary. That, of course, matters little now, except with respect to the letter of the law, as the recent tribunal ruling in a similar case in Osun state clearly points to. For Sokoto state, that is more an academic exercise. Tribunal or not, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal is the governor and governor-elect of Sokoto state. He has one victory now and will most probably secure another, if he cares to challenge the supplementary election he has just won in court for the sake of righting a wrong for posterity. In that case, Tambuwal would still prevail because he also won the initial “inconclusive” vote.
Someone in far away Kigali, capital city of Rwanda, however, feels that is not enough. Kayode Fayemi, governor of Ekiti state, thinks Tambuwal ought to have done better. A thousand votes ahead or more would have been more a thing of pride than 342 votes.
“Ultimately, you cannot win an election with 300 votes and take all”, he told an African CEOs forum, obviously referring to Governor Tambuwal’s narrow margin electoral victory, “and the person who loses an election with 300 votes gets nothing”, he added, in solidarity with his defected and agonising APC in Sokoto state. “It is a recipe for disaster…”, Fayemi lamented.
The Ekiti state governor, who won election into a staggered second term last year, would have perhaps rejected his victory, if he had a narrow margin on his opponent, Ayo Fayose’s candidate, Professor Kolapo Olusola or he would have shared his administration with the PDP, half and half. Fine talk in faraway Kigali to a mainly non Nigerian audience is cheap. He still has a chance to practicalise his power sharing rationale in Ekiti state. With 197,459 of the votes to Olusola’s 178,121, Governor Fayemi ought to concede 40% of his government to his opponent in the PDP.
Fayemi is too far away in Rwanda to learn that Aminu Tambuwal has already extended the olive branch to his main APC opponent, through an open invitation to participate in serving the state. The Sokoto state governor is no stranger to the inclusive approach to governance. Until recently, a majority of APC elements were part and parcel of his administration, including, in fact, their governorship candidate, who was the deputy governor and commissioner for works.
There is, therefore, no-winner-takes-all attitude in Sokoto state that Fayemi can describe as a “recipe for disaster”, unless if by that he actually means if the winner is not APC. And if the desperation exhibited by his party to take over the whole country by all means, legitimate and otherwise, is anything to go by, the Ekiti governor’s worse fear is any political party controlling any state, other than the APC.
It is indeed ironic that Dr. Fayemi, a man supposedly of intellect, who owes his rise to nothing as much as he should to democracy, should express such opinion so bereft of democratic principle. Suggesting that the winner of a closely contested governorship election is a governor of only half of a state is certainly a subscription to pedestrian views. For, the mandate given by a little more than half of the people is taken as mandate given by all the people.
Fayemi’s belief that a leader returned by a narrow margin of votes has no moral right to form a government in the exclusion of the opposition is way off the cut off mark for intellectual engagement in our presidential system. The Ekiti state governor ought to know that.
What spokespeople of the APC actually know is, indeed, becoming a puzzle. The utterances of individuals in those quarters are more and more indicative of lack of awareness, comprehension or respect for due process or the rule of law.
A certain degeneration in rationality tends to be associated with rising profile in APC, especially in people previously credited with appreciable intellect. And personalities like Fayemi may well be the latest victim of this syndrome. His geographical distance from the scene of affairs may therefore have less to do with Fayemi’s gaffe on the Sokoto election than the general detachment of the APC from reality: the fact that the survival of their party is really merely hanging on a thread, as its rejection by Nigerians clearly manifests in their past strong hold states of Bauchi, Adamawa, Rivers, Benue, Imo, Oyo, Osun and Sokoto.
Shekara writes from Government House, Sokoto.
