Ondo 2016 and the Fear Factors

Political Notes
Barely 48 hours to the governorship election in Ondo State, after feeling the pulse of the major actors in the race, it has become obvious that even as they all express considerable optimism that they would win, practically all interested parties nurse one fear or the other ahead of the election.
For the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), his concern is basically that one of his main contenders – the Alliance for Democracy (AD) candidate – Mr. Olusola Oke has stupendous money at his disposal.
He expressed confidence that despite the fact that the people are poor, they are not suffering from poverty of the mind. So, he hoped that money politics would not swing the election against him.
Akeredolu is equally very worried that while Oke felt aggrieved and opted to pursue his ambition‎ on the AD platform, some APC members are only pretending to be party loyalists whereas they are working against the party from within.
For the Oke camp, while they boast of strong connection with the grassroots, the fear is simply that some forces within the presidency are showing too much desperation to take Ondo State at all cost in lieu of the 2019 presidential election.
Their premonition is premised on the alleged irregularities that characterised the APC primaries, hence, the fear that peoples’ vote may not actually determine who eventually wins the election.
In the case of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the initial fear was informed by the attempt to alienate Jegede from the race. But that fear has now been allayed with the Appeal Court ruling of Wednesday which affirmed Jegede as the authentic candidate of the party.
‎However, if the call for a postponement yields no positive result, Jegede may have a tough time making significant impact in the election as he would have originally because of the time wasted on the legal fireworks.
But the truth about the race is that it is a free-for-all with no one of the candidates having a significant edge over the others. This, technically, is the mother of all fears. Until then, fingers crossed!
 

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