ANALYSIS: Why Ondo State is electing its governor in November

On Saturday, 16 November, Ondo State voters will elect their next governor. Incumbent Lucky Aiyedatiwa of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who became governor in December following the death of Rotimi Akeredolu, is one of the 17 candidates on the ballot.

Ondo is one of eight Nigerian states that hold off-cycle governorship elections. The others are Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi and Osun.

PREMIUM TIMES narrates how a two-year legal battle took the state’s governorship elections away from the Nigerian regular election season.

Rotimi Akeredolu Aketi

Ondo’s descent into Off-cycle elections

Long before the Labour Party (LP) became a household name in Nigeria’s politics, its first state governor was a principal actor in the drama that threw the Ondo State governorship election off-cycle.

In April 2007, the state voted for the presidential, national and state assemblies, and governorship candidates in the General Election like other states in the country.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared incumbent Olusegun Agagu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the winner of the governorship election. A month later, on 29 May, he was sworn into a second term, like the other 35 state governors.

A two-year legal dispute

However, the LP candidate, Olusegun Mimiko, who was declared the runner-up, challenged Mr Agagu’s re-election at the state’s election petition tribunal.

In July 2008, the five-member tribunal led by Justice Garba Nabaruma nullified Mr Agagu’s election and announced Mr Mimiko as the legitimate winner.

The tribunal said the LP candidate polled 198,269 valid votes to return ahead of Mr Agagu, who garnered 128,669 votes.

Mr Agagu, already in the second year of his second term, appealed the judgement before the Court of Appeal in Benin, Edo State.

Agagu out, Mimiko in

Seven months later, on 23 February 2009, the appeal court gave its verdict. The court was then the final arbiter in governorship election disputes.

Reading the judgement, the Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeal in Benin, Abdullah Mustapha, declared that Mr Mimiko garnered 195,030 votes against Mr Agagu’s 131,565. Therefore, it affirmed the decision of the election tribunal upturning Mr Agagu’s re-election.

The appeal court ordered INEC to withdraw the certificate of return from Mr Agagu and that Mr Mimiko be sworn in as governor, as he was the legitimate winner of the April 2007 election.

Probably anticipating his fate, Mr Agagu did not show up in court that judgement day. Only the state’s attorney-general, the commissioner for information and a few of his supporters were present.

Mr Mimiko, on the other hand, was accompanied to the court by the then-National Chairman of the Labour Party, Dan Iwuanyanwu, and a large number of supporters, most of whom were not allowed into the court premises for security reasons.

The next day, on 24 February 2009, the Ondo State Chief Judge, Ojubunmi Olagbegi, administered the oath of office to Mr Mimiko as he assumed office as the new governor, promising to tackle hunger and unemployment.

How it affects the election timeline

Section 180, second part of Chapter 6 of the Nigerian constitution, stipulates that a governor’s four-year tenure counts from the day they took the oath of office.

“The governor shall vacate his office at the expiration of a period of four years commencing from the date when – (a) in the case of a person first elected as governor under this Constitution, he took the Oath of Allegiance and oath of office; and (b) the person last elected to that office took the oath of allegiance and oath of office or would, but for his death, have taken such oaths,” the constitution states.

Therefore, Mr Mimiko’s inauguration almost two years after the 2007 election ultimately disrupted the initial flow of change of government in the state, setting the state on the path of off-cycle governorship elections.

Off-cycle elections continue

For the first time since 1999, Ondo State did not vote for governor during the 2011 general elections. In the 2012 poll, Mr Mimiko won a second term against his closest rival, Olusola Oke of the PDP. In the election, Mr Mimiko garnered 260,199 votes to beat Mr Oke, who got 155,961.

Lucky Aiyedatiwa

Rotimi Akeredolu won the next two elections in 2016 and 2020. However, he died in December 2023, three years into his second term, after a long battle with illness. His deputy, Mr Aiyedatiwa, continued the tenure, which expires in February 2025. Mr Aiyedatiwa is contesting Saturday’s election as the APC candidate.

The winner of Saturday’s governorship election will be sworn in next February.

In Ondo and the seven other states, off-cycle governorship polls are the results of successful election petitions against sitting governors.