Governorship: Results reshape political map

Results of last Tuesday’s governorship polls have started coming out; bringing some noticeable change to Nigeria’s political map.

The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) snatched two states, Oyo and Ogun, from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to maintain an overall majority of five out of the six states in the south-west.

As widely predicted, Babatunde Fashola won Lagos State by a huge majority. Lagos is the country’s commercial hub, inhabited by many ethnic nationalities. Voting there focus more on performance and less on ethnic and religion considerations.

ACN already has Ekiti and Osun in its kitty. Governorship elections did not hold in the two. Ondo, the sixth state, is controlled by the Labour Party.

ACN, previously known as Alliance for Democracy (AD), controlled all the states in the southwest when democracy started in 1999 but got displaced by the PDP in 2003.

ACN went on the rebound in 2007 but was still checkmated by the PDP. However ACN held on to Lagos and later regained Ekiti and Osun through court verdicts.

ACN attributed its lost in 2003 to rigging; but the ousted governors did not inspire with good performance. They were mostly seen as below the high political standard of the area. Now, ACN has another opportunity to prove critics wrong.

The Nigerian Elections News Report – NENR – will continue with its focus on the governorship results subsequently.