As President Muhammadu Buhari deplanes in New York this morning, he possibly will have an unusual gait. The bearing of electoral invisibility which had trailed his way since his emergence was given a direct poke in the country he left behind yesterday.
Osun State was the first major electoral victory for his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC after it emerged from the merger of the country’s leading opposition parties.
The APC won the 2014 governorship election with a simple majority. It also went on to win the major elections conducted in the state in 2015 including the presidential, Senate and House of Representatives contests.
However, yesterday’s declaration of the Osun State governorship election as inconclusive has drawn commentaries from stakeholders on the vulnerability of the APC to their precarious condition with voters compared to 2015 and 2014.
The results which put the ruling APC in second position also showed that the combined votes of the PDP and the Social Democratic Party, SPD inevitably had turned the APC into the minority in a state that they had held on to for eight straight years.
PDP enthusiasts in several social media platforms were yesterday in jubilant mood after the announcement of the results commenced. However, as the announcements continued and there appeared a pause, anxiety appeared to take grip of the PDP stakeholders fearing for the worse.
PDP stakeholders from across the country understandably put a focus on the election and would no doubt be delighted that the prospect of a fighting challenge to the APC exists. After serial losses in Ekiti, Ondo, and Edo, the fact that the momentum of the APC could be challenged is bound to excite the party faithful.
While the party had in the past alleged that they were cheated out in some of the states, the fact that the opposition has been able to come out of the election dusting the ruling party is bound to excite the opposition camp.
The intervention of Senate President Bukola Saraki who helped to forge the discord within the opposition PDP after he also played a reverse role in helping the APC win Ondo is also bound to be revealing. Only last week, Saraki had hinted to the PDP faithful in Lagos that he would teach them how to defeat Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in Lagos. Whether Osun was a test run could be revealed in the days to come.
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