How Okpebholo navigated the ‘bumpy’ road to Osadebe House

For the All Progressives Congress candidate in the Edo State governorship election, Monday Okpebholo, the journey was fraught with anxiety. However, he ultimately had all the elements aligned in his favour, enabling him to realise his dream of becoming the next occupant of the Osadebe House, writes ’LAOLU AFOLABI

The Independent National Electoral Commission held the highly anticipated governorship election in Edo State on Saturday. In the lead-up to the election, the atmosphere was charged with tension, largely due to the heated exchanges and threats exchanged between the competing political parties. To ensure a smooth electoral process, more than 43,000 policemen, along with various other security personnel, were deployed across the state by Friday.

Despite the palpable anxiety and the potential for unrest, the election unfolded with relative peace. Voters participated in the process, demonstrating their civic duty amid concerns about political antics and interference. While the election was not entirely free from the usual manoeuvring characteristic of political contests, it proceeded without the widespread violence that had been feared.

At the end of the exercise, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Monday Okpebholo, polled 291,667 votes to defeat his closest rival and the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Asue Ighodalo, who garnered 247,274 votes. The third force, the Labour Party, did not spring the much-expected surprise as its candidate, Olumide Akpata, managed to get a scanty 22,763 votes.

The election was keenly contested. It was initially a three-horse race, but it eventually ended in a two-horse contest. It was battle royale between the PDP and the APC. The contest was intense and fierce and a battle of supremacy between two titans, a former governor, Adams Oshiomhole and the incumbent. Godwin Obaseki.

There had been agitation over zoning as the Edo Central desired to produce Obaseki’s successor at the Dennis Osadebe Government House in Benin City. Since the commencement of the democratic dispensation, Edo South has had their chances two times with Lucky Igbinedion and now Obaseki, both governing the state for 16 years. Edo North had its opportunity through the eight-year term of Oshiomhole. Edo Central had a brief stint at the Government House with Prof Oserheimen Osunbor between 2007 and 2008 before he was ousted by Oshiomhole through the courts.

The journey to Saturday’s election had a dint of suspense, fear and anxiety for all stakeholders and party leadership. All the major political parties, the PDP, APC and Labour Party, had issues with the primary elections that produced their candidates. The parties, however, sorted all the legal and internal encumbrances before the election, though with attendant consequences and bandwagon effects, with only the APC left with a mild scar.

The Edo APC primary election was conducted on February 17, 2024 amid a crisis. The Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, led a seven-man committee to oversee the primary. It, however, became controversial. Ahead of the exercise, a frontline governorship aspirant and former candidate of the party in the 2020 election against Obaseki, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, stepped down.

After the exercise, three “candidates” emerged. A member of the House of Representatives, Dennis Idahosa, was declared the winner by the Uzodimma committee, having polled 40,453 votes. Another aspirant, Monday Okpebholo, was returned by the Chief Returning Officer, Dr Stanley Ogboaja. Furthermore, the spokesman of the Local Government Returning Officers, Ojo Babatunde, declared Anamero Dekeri as another governorship candidate of the party.

This forced the party to summon an emergency meeting, where the February 17 exercise was declared inconclusive. Also, some of the aspirants petitioned President Bola Tinubu, blaming Oshiomhole for alleged high-handedness. Some other party chieftains, including a former governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi, blamed the former governor for causing a crisis in the party as he did in the build-up to the 2020 election.

The President would, however, not blame Oshiomhole as he summoned stakeholders and called for fair play. After the meeting, Oshiomhole spoke, claiming that the President was not for zoning but a fair poll. He gave the example of Kogi State, where a kinsman of the immediate-past governor took over the reins of leadership.

The party constituted another committee headed by the Cross River State Governor, Bassey Otu, to re-conduct the exercise February 22, 2024. At the rescheduled exercise, Okpebholo defeated other aspirants to emerge the party’s candidate. Following the announcement, Idahosa approached the court, protesting the result of the exercise. Oshiomhole also maintained a distance.

The party was, however, determined to foster peace. The President intervened by summoning the meeting of the stakeholders from the state and the national leadership of the party to Abuja for March 18. At the meeting, Oshiomhole, Okpebholo, Idahosa, Matthew Urhogide and other party chieftains were present. The national leadership of the party, led by its national chairman, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, was also present. It was agreed at the meeting that Idahosa be nominated as the running mate to Okpebholo, as the President asked him to withdraw his protest litigation. A visibly elated President asked Oshiomhole after the meeting, “Adams, are we doing well? You sure?” to which he replied, “Yes sir, we are good to go.”

Following the reconciliation move, the party leaders met at Oshiomhole’s house on April 3, 2024, to resolve whatever lingering internal crisis trailing the primary. Both Okpebholo and Idahosa were at the meeting. Addressing the meeting, Oshiomhole declared that the post-primary crisis in the party had been resolved. The same day, the party received eight former Local Government Areas chairmen and members of the PDP into its fold at the former governor’s residence.

By July 5, during another meeting with the President, Oshiomhole had taken the leadership of the campaign for Okpebholo, as he led the candidates and other party leaders, alongside the Minister of Niger Delta Development, Abubakar Momoh, to a meeting with the President at the Presidential Villa.

Another crisis well managed by the party was the return of the Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, to the APC. Shaibu had indicated interest in succeeding Obaseki and in a bid to achieve his ambition, he fell out with his principal. He participated in the PDP primary conducted in February and emerged winner in a parallel exercise. He was then impeached as the deputy governor by the state House of Assembly in April.

Following his impeachment, he vowed to ensure the candidate of the PDP, Asue Ighodalo, did not win the election. He returned to the APC July 20 and was well-received by the party leadership in the state and nationally. His impeachment was overturned by the High Court on July 17 and the Appeal Court on August 20.

In politics, there’s no permanent friend or enemy, so goes a saying. This played out as Philip reconciled with Oshiomhole and they both worked for the election, campaigning everywhere for Okpebholo’s victory.

For the PDP, Ighodalo emerged as its candidate for the 2024 Edo State governorship election on February 22. However, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja nullified the primary on the ground that 378 delegates who were to vote during the exercise were unlawfully denied their rights to vote.  Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, on July 4 declared the exercise, which produced Ighodalo as its governorship candidate, invalid.

The judgment was for the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/165/2024, brought by aggrieved delegates, notably Kelvin Mohammed, in a representative capacity.

On August 26, the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja set aside a judgment delivered by Justice Ekwo and in agreement with the submission of the PDP, who had appealed the ruling of the lower court in a 25-ground appeal, the court argued that the issue of primary is an internal matter within the political party and, as such, outside the jurisdiction of any court. It declared that a primary election is an internal affair of any political party; hence the plaintiff’s grievances cannot be entertained by any court, as they are not contesting political office but selected to only participate in the selection of a candidate for the party.

The PDP’s candidate faced another hurdle as the embattled deputy governor took him to court, seeking the nullity of the primary that produced him. To his relief, on May 27, a Federal High Court in Abuja dismissed the lawsuit brought by Shaibu. Justice James Omotosho stated that Shaibu did not have the legal standing to challenge the outcome of the primary, because he did not fully participate in it and was not present at the venue on the day it took place. Omotosho further ruled that Shaibu’s lawsuit was premature as he failed to exhaust the internal dispute resolution mechanism within the PDP before resorting to court.

In the build-up to the election, the Labour Party, which had made waves in the state during the 2023 presidential election, also had its share of crisis. The party, under the leadership of its now-embattled national chairman, Julius Abure, produced a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Olumide Akpata, as its standard-bearer. The factional national chairman of the party at the time, Lamidi Apapa, announced the conduct of a parallel governorship primary and named Anderson Asemota as its candidate and Monday Mawah as his running mate. Not done, a United Kingdom-based legal practitioner, Hilton Idahosa, also announced himself as the party’s third factional governorship candidate under the Apapa faction. Following the recognition of the Abure faction by the Independent National Electoral Commission, Akpata was formally named the party’s candidate.

Akpata’s emergence was against the run of play. The two leading parties had settled for their candidates from the Edo Central Senatorial District. The LP settled for a candidate from the Edo South Senatorial District, where the incumbent governor comes from.

He also had his legal battles. After the primary, a chieftain of the party, Kenneth Imasuagbon, took Akpata and the party to court. A Federal High Court sitting in Benin presided over by Justice Babatunde Quadri, however, ruled on the candidacy tussle, giving a clean bill to Akpata. The Apapa faction also took the party to court to challenge Akpata’s candidacy and, on September 11, 2024, the Appeal Court dismissed the suit and upheld the candidate of Akpata as the LP governorship candidate.

The whole electioneering for the election focused on Obaseki and Oshiomhole. The election was to settle scores between the duo. Oshiomhole had singlehandedly nominated Obaseki to succeed him and, against the advice of party chieftains, he had stuck his ground, convincing the national leadership of the party that Obaseki was his choice. The relationship had become frosty towards the end of the first term and Oshiomhole, who was then the national chairman of the party, denied Obaseki the second-term ticket, a development that angered some governors of the ruling party and cost Oshiomhole his position.

Obaseki defected to the PDP alongside Shaibu, his deputy and trounced Oshiomhole and the APC candidate, Ize-Iyamu, in the 2020 election. Obaseki won the election standing on a tripod. One leg was the Dan Orbih leadership of the PDP, funded by some party governors, including the immediate-past governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike. The other leg was Shaibu and his political machines in Edo North. The third leg of the tripod was Obaseki and his stronghold in Edo South.

By the time the electioneering had become intense, Obaseki’s three legs of the tripod had been demobilised. He had lost his loyal deputy in Shaibu, whose effort curtailed Oshiomhole and his arsenal in the 2020 election in Edo North. Surprisingly, Obaseki had courted trouble with Orbih’s political structure of the PDP in Edo, which is in alliance with Wike. The group, which termed itself Legacy Group, was all out to decimate the Obaseki structure in the state. Obaseki was left with his lieutenants spread across the state, but not having the domineering and towering structure he had in 2020 to emplace his successor.

Another trouble for Obaseki was his sour relationship with the Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II. The crisis, which had festered, was made obvious during the grand finale of the campaign as Obaseki led party leaders and chieftains, including governors and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar to the Esama of Benin Kingdom, High Chief Gabriel Igbinedion. The APC campaign trail, led by Vice-President Kashim Shettima, however, paid homage to the Oba of Benin, in his palace.

Political pundits had predicted a three-horse race, with Ighodalo sticking it out with Okpebholo and Akpata for the seat. By Saturday afternoon, Akpata was seriously not in contention, as he failed to build on the Obidient wave in the 2023 election. To some members of the Obidient Movement, Akpata should not be a beneficiary of their struggle in 2023. They had preferred Kenneth Imasuagbon, who was part of the movement to elect Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the last general election.

Okpebholo’s candidacy, despite early controversies, was solidified through strategic reconciliation efforts within the APC, with key endorsements from Oshiomhole and Shaibu and Tinubu’s efforts. On the other hand, the PDP, weakened by internal divisions and legal battles, struggled to mount a unified challenge. The Labour Party, despite its initial momentum from the 2023 elections, was unable to maintain its influence. Ultimately, the election reflected deeper political power struggles, particularly between Oshiomhole and Obaseki, as Edo’s political landscape shifted once again, with Okpebholo the beneficiary.