Party stability: Sanwo-Olu, Abiodun, Makinde show sagacity one year into second term
The trio of Governors Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos); Dapo Abiodun (Ogun) and Seyi Makinde (Oyo) will mark the first year anniversaries of their second terms in office on Wednesday, May 29, 2024. While both Sanwo-Olu and Abiodun were re-elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Makinde is of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
One of the significant overviews of the first year anniversary of their second terms is how the governors have successfully maintained tranquility within their parties, considering the intrigues that characterised their re-elections during the 2023 general election. In spite of the fact that the trio enjoyed the power of incumbency in the last general polls, the political exigencies that surrounded their return both at the party level and during the March 18, 2023, gubernatorial polls, nearly defied the incumbency power. While some schools of thought said that for the trio to have contained opposition within their platforms in the last one year calls for commendations, others were of the view that had they failed to do that, governance would have suffered serious setbacks in their various states.
The chronic economic hardships that heralded President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s fiat removal of petrol subsidies during his May 29, 2023, inaugural speech, did not work in favour of the governors given the prominent roles they played to ensure the victory of the former governor of Lagos State in the last presidential election and the public backlash against the policy.
While the palliatives, which the Federal Government provided and left in care of the governors to distribute to citizens to cushion the effects of the subsidy removal almost tore several states apart, Sanwo-Olu, Abiodun and Makinde, successfully distributed the items to the satisfaction of the people even though the initiative did not necessarily address the economic pains generated by the subsidy removal policy. But the governors, to a considerable extent, did their best to ensure that politicians in their parties did not hijack the palliatives for selfish purposes.
Sanwo-Olu And Lagos Politics A Year After Second Term Inauguration
SINCE Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, Sanwo-Olu happens to be the only governor of Lagos who enjoyed a seamless re-election at the party level among the three governors that preceded him. While President Tinubu had to fight to finish with Afenifere leaders, who were bent on denying him a return ticket in 2003 on the platform of defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD), the president’s successor, Babatunde Fashola, was forced to eat the humble pie in 2011 before he could secure a return ticket.
Recall that Tinubu had to part ways with Afenifere leaders to make a second term while Fashola was forced to drop his then deputy, Princess Sarah Sosan and pick another woman, Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire. Thus, both President Tinubu and Fashola, who later became the Minister of Works, Housing and Power under former President Muhammadu Buhari, faced a lot of party turbulence throughout their second terms.
In 2015, Fashola had no influence on how his successor, former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, emerged. But Ambode appears to be the most unfortunate among the governors. He was denied a return ticket in 2018 after a series of battles he had with politicians in the ruling party within the four years he ruled. The former Lagos State Accountant-General had issues with his immediate predecessor, Fashola, to the extent of engaging in open confrontation with the erstwhile minister over the construction of Lagos Airport Road. He also had issues with the party’s stakeholders over the Lagos waste management system, which pitted him against the state’s Assembly and eventually Tinubu. Part of the grouse against Ambode during his four-year reign in Lagos was that he didn’t rule in accordance with APC’s political ideology. By the time the Epe-born politician ended his first term in 2019, almost all the APC political apparatchiks had distanced themselves from him. Apparently out of frustration, he even maligned Sanwo-Olu publicly when it was glaring to him that the incumbent governor was positioned by the party to take over from him.
After Sanwo-Olu became governor in 2019, part of his cardinal principles, going by his disposition, have been humility and total adherence to party manifesto. Even though it was insinuated that he would spend one term as a Christian to complete the second term of Ambode, the governor managed to navigate through the second term challenges and also doused the tension around Christians directing the affairs of the state for three consecutive terms.
In 2019, when his deputy, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, was selected as his running mate, it was insinuated that the former Commissioner for Science and Technology during Tinubu’s administration in Lagos was strategically positioned to take over from him in 2023. The calculation was that while Sanwo-Olu would complete the two terms for the Christian community on the governorship seat, Hamzat, who also hails from Epe in Lagos East like Ambode, would balance the second term for that zone. Many political pundits then stated that while Tinubu from Lagos West served two terms, Fashola from Lagos Central served two terms, and both were Muslims; while Ambode, a Christian from Lagos East served one term. The permutations didn’t favour the incumbent governor to get the second term ticket last year but he did.
Apart from striving to deliver the dividends of democracy to the people of Lagos from 2019 to 2023, Sanwo-Olu, who though is considered as not being a politician, tactically and meticulously played, and still plays, Lagos APC’s politics.
First, it would have been expected that Sanwo-Olu would engage in administrative brawls with his deputy, whom many believed is not only more experienced than him but also a grassroots politician. Hamzat’s father, the late Oba Olatunji Hamzat, happened to be one of Tinubu’s elders in Lagos politics. But the incumbent’s relationship with his deputy is one of the most cordial. This is not to say there are no issues; it has however been kept tactically out of public knowledge.
Since his re-election last year, no issue of brawls between Sanwo-Olu and Hamzat has been reported unlike his predecessors. Tinubu used three deputies while in office as governor; Fashola used two while Ambode’s deputy, Dr Idiat Oluranti Adebule, now a Senator, openly denied and distanced herself from her principal during his (Ambode) ordeal in 2018.
Thus, Sanwo-Olu has maintained a cordial relationship with Hamzat in the last five years and this has also extended to their spouses – Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu and Mrs. Oluremi Hamzat – who many regard as siamese twins because of their closeness.
Findings also showed that the relationship between the governor and his deputy began as far back as when Hamzat was first brought in as a commissioner under Tinubu’s governorship. Sanwo-Olu served then as a Special Adviser and later commissioner in Tinubu’s cabinet.
In the last one year also, Sanwo-Olu has also been able to carry all the local council chairmen along, including the 377 councillors, who were said to have been empowered by the governor through several projects and other incentives.
In fact, some observers said that ward councillors have direct access to the governor now, maintaining that gone are those days when councillors were left to function at the mercy of local council chairmen.
Besides, Sanwo-Olu has also maintained a cordial relationship with party executives in the state just as the stories of differences between governors and members of their cabinets, which characterised the cabinets of Fashola and Ambode, is hardly heard of under the incumbent governor.
He is also said to have demonstrated a matured understanding of the Lagos APC Governance Advisory Council (GAC), with whom Ambode fell apart and consequently paid the price.
A source quoted the governor as saying that being a governor is never the ultimate and that it is incumbent on whoever occupies the position to give honour to whom it is due. It is not surprising that when it began to be rumoured that President Tinubu may drop Sanwo-Olu for a second term, the GAC issued a statement to refute the insinuation.
Navigating Perceived Crisis With Obasa, Others
PRIOR to the 2023 gubernatorial election, several insinuations were made as per the gubernatorial ambitions of then Speaker, House of Representatives and incumbent Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila; Speaker, Lagos House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa; immediate past Head of Service, Hakeem Muri-Okunola and lawmaker representing Lagos East, Senator Tokunbo Abiru and others.
All the aforementioned personalities were alleged to have nursed gubernatorial ambitions had the initial permutation that Sanwo-Olu would not run had materialised.
For instance, there were several reports before the March 18, 2023, election that Gbajabiamila was positioning himself to succeed Sanwo-Olu. The former Speaker of the House of Representatives had to refute the insinuation. Likewise, there was news around town that Senator Abiru was being projected by Tinubu to replace Sanwo-Olu; he also refuted the news. Similarly, Okunola, who is currently the Private Principal Secretary to Mr. President, was reported as being projected to replace Sanwo-Olu but the erstwhile Head of Service also refuted the news on his X page formerly Twitter.
Interestingly, amid all of these permutations, Sanwo-Olu maintained and still maintains a peaceful relationship with all the characters. While the Speaker, Obasa threw a jab at Sanwo-Olu when the Assembly rejected some of his Commissioner-nominees in a manner that suggested that there was a face-off between the executive and legislative arms, the governor demonstrated unreserved maturity by ensuring a cordial relationship between him and Obasa in the last one year.
The same story cannot be said between Fashola and former Speaker, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, and also between Ambode and Obasa. To also demonstrate a large heart, Sanwo-Olu has found a place in his heart to forgive his immediate past predecessor, Ambode, who once referred to him in a bad light publicly. Apart from forgiving the erstwhile Accountant-General of the state, the incumbent has also reconciled the former governor with Tinubu and other party stakeholders.
The incumbent has also been commended for not looking away from any of the projects initiated by his predecessors, a development that is common among political office holders in the country.
Given the political astuteness Sanwo-Olu has demonstrated, The Guardian learnt that pressures are mounting on him to step in as the chairman of Southwest Governors Forum, a position occupied by former governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, until his demise last year.
Abiodun And Makinde
IN Ogun, Abiodun has also managed to sustain peace within the Ogun State chapter of APC in the last one year. This is coming against the backdrop of what the incumbent faced during his re-election when his predecessors, Ibikunle Amosun and Gbenga Daniel, allegedly worked against his re-election. The two former governors did not pretend over their discontentment with the incumbent during the last election. But after the election was won and lost, Abiodun has maintained peace in the party. In like manner, Governor Makinde is fully in control of Oyo PDP structure.