The Managing Editor of The Avalon Daily, Ayodele Adio, has said the victory of the Peoples Democratic Party at the Osun governorship election was not caused by the internal crisis of the state’s All Progressives Congress.
Adio made this remark while featuring on TVC News Nigeria on Tuesday, dislodging the belief that the internal discord in the Osun APC was caused by the rift between the sitting governor, Gboyega Oyetola and Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbosola.
Osun Governor-elect, Ademola Adeleke, had said although he didn’t receive any personal complicity from the former Governor of the state, Aregbesola, his associates helped him win the elections.
Some APC factions loyal to Aregbesola in the state also ascribed the defeat of the party to the rivalry between their principal and the sitting governor, Oyetola.
Adio, however, maintained that PDP’s victory at the poll was because they worked to increase the turnout numbers of voters in the state, especially in their stronghold areas which he asserts increased their votes by 58% in this election compared to the 2018 elections, where they gathered only 255,000 votes.
He further analysed that the APC governorship candidate also didn’t not factor in emotional connections with the electorates and didn’t play the politics of elections well.
In his words, “People will like to blame the Aregbesola factor, but if you look at results from Ilesha East, he won his own local government.
“For me, it wasn’t soo much about the infractions in the APC, as it was about the Ground game of the PDP. The highest number of newly registered voters in the South-West was in Osun State. 708,000 new registered voters.
“In 2018, the PDP gathered 255,000 votes, in this election, they gathered 403,000 votes, which means they increased their number of votes by 58%, so the details and the devil is in the numbers and the data because what the PDP had done was to increase voters turn out and to ensure that in places like Ede (their stronghold) where their candidates were, they had more numbers turn out to vote and they had increased the voters’ turn-out, and that was had coaster them to victory.”
Speaking on the performance factor of the Oyetola’s administration in his re-election bid, Adio said,
“By fiscal and normal governance standard, you’ll see that Oyetola had performed spectacularly well, but I think for some reasons, he seems like someone that could not connect at an emotional level to the people, and if you can’t do that at most times, it becomes a problem with the electorates, and the opposition can usually capitalise on that.
“He (Oyetola) played the politics of governance but didn’t play the politics of elections”.
