How Peter Obi Effect Scuttled My Chance Of Winning Lagos Governorship Poll— PDP Candidate
Former governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor, has recounted how “Peter Obi effect” prevented him from defeating Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in the 2023 election.
Jandor who appeared on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday, stated that if not for the “Peter Obi effect”, he would have emerged victoriously in the poll.
“The 2023 election came with this Tsunami that nobody ever expected and it was there for everybody to see,” he said, stating that after Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) won the February 2023 presidential election in Lagos, the dynamics changed against the PDP for the governorship poll that was conducted weeks after.
For the governorship election, the electoral umpire INEC declared incumbent governor Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner. He polled a total of 762,134 votes, defeating LP’s Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour who scored 312,329 votes, followed by Jandor with 62,449 votes.
At the presidential election which was held earlier, Obi defeated APC’s Bola Tinubu in Lagos State. Obi polled 582,454 votes to trounce the strongman of Bourdillon who scored 572,606 votes, PDP’s Atiku Abubakar who got 75,750 votes, and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) who polled 8,442.
However, Jandor said the election came with peculiar dynamics. “Before the February 25th general election, we were on the streets of Lagos and the ruling party was nowhere to be found. We had several debates and he (Sanwo-Olu) didn’t show up and he did say he didn’t want to share a stage with me,” he said.
“The 2023 election came with its dynamics, and it was a two-horse race until the presidential election. If you look at what happened in the presidential election, Peter Obi came first (in Lagos), Asiwaju came second, and Atiku came third.
“The moment that happened, there was this belief that if we do this, we can get this state off XYZ. So, we were victims of that.
“Each time I address my people, I tell them: look, we did everything but that wave came and swallowed the whole thing; nobody saw that coming.”
He said if not for the Peter Obi effect, “I probably would have won the election” at the governorship level, adding that he believed that it wasn’t God’s time yet for him to become Lagos governor at the time.