“The processes are excessively monetized and gives an advantage to the highest bidder” —Ebuka Onyekwelu
There is a very popular assumption that Anambra State voters do not vote for the All Progressives Congress – APC. This is then reinforced by another outrageous impression that APC cannot win any election in Anambra State. In all, the common denominator upon which these suppositions are founded is that the APC is not liked and cannot be voted for, by Anambra voters. Yet, the APC is just a political party and has not actually felt any different in a significant way when compared to other opposition political parties in Anambra State.
Before now, precisely around 2015, the general, yet faulty perception was that the APC could not be voted for throughout the Southeast. A sustained attribution of the party’s ownership with an ethnic colouration of sorts heightened this conjecture. But today, the APC has two states of Imo and Ebonyi, putting it forward as the majority ruling party in the Southeast, ahead of PDP, APGA, and LP with one state each. Even in the South-South which is the Southeast’s closest political ally given the similarity in the behavior of voters in both zones, the APC also has two states.
Now, the question is; how does voting work here? The fact of how Anambra voters and indeed, Nigerian voters, vote is that money play a remarkably significant role in who wins an important election, like the governorship election. The entire electioneering processes are excessively monetized and commercialized in a way that gives an advantage to the highest bidder who knows how and where to go. To this end, what the power of incumbency does is that it deploys the apparatuses of the state with its full resources, to fuel favourable narrative, weaken the opposition by buying them up, and summarily fund electioneering beyond the limits of the opposition, with far more inadequate resources. Since 2006 when APGA took over the leadership of Anambra State for instance, it is doubtful if any opposition has been able to compete with APGA in terms of resources deployed towards prosecuting the governorship election. No party has ever come close to competing with APGA in this regard. Consequently, the assumption that one political party is not liked in a contest that is driven and determined by what the voters can get is at best a myth, comparable to the myth of zoning in Anambra State.
To buttress, in 2010, Action Congress – AC, which metamorphosed into APC had Dr. Chris Ngige as its candidate and the party came second with a total ballot of 60 thousand votes, behind Peter Obi’s APGA, which scored 97 thousand votes. But ahead of Soludo’s PDP, with 59 thousand votes. Less than a year later in 2011, the Action Congress – AC, with the same Dr. Chris Ngige as its senatorial candidate roundly defeated APGA with a quality and celebrated candidate like Prof. Dora Akuyili in the Anambra Central senatorial race. It is difficult to fully contextualize the import of that election and how unfavourable the outcome ordinarily was.
In 2013, APGA secured a total of 180 thousand and some fraction votes to defeat PDP with 97 thousand votes and APC with 95 thousand votes. Then, in 2017, APGA doubled down and secured 234 thousand votes, ahead of APC’s 98 thousand, and PDP’s 70 thousand votes. The last governorship election in Anambra was held in 2021 and in that election, APGA scored 112 thousand votes against PDP’s 53 thousand and APC’s 43 thousand.
Given these facts, it is hard to justify any claim that the APC is incapable of winning an election in Anambra State. Getting thousands of votes in a governorship election and maintaining the first three positions in all governorship elections since 2010, does not suggest incapacitation. The party is simply challenged by funding difficulties as an opposition wrestling with an incumbent with a higher war chest at its immediate disposal. APC just like the PDP or any other opposition political party, are unable to win not because they are not being voted, nor because they are not liked, but because they are not voted enough. While they are voted by tens of thousands of voters, they need more votes to be able to swing the tides. If the APC can double or triple the efforts that had consistently earned it tens of thousands of votes in all past governorship elections in Anambra State, it might be able to have a favourable swing.
As the 2025 Anambra governorship election draws closer, interested parties have continued to advance all kinds of postulations, a major one of which is that the APC can’t be voted in Anambra State. Yet, throughout the last four governorship elections in the State, the APC got tens of thousands of votes and often came second or third. Therefore, the APC is a serious contestant in the Anambra State gubernatorial election. Indeed, it stands to reason that any day the party decides that it is time to put its full machinery into winning the Anambra gubernatorial election, it will be the party to beat.
It is, to this extent, imperative that those alleging that the APC cannot win or cannot be voted in Anambra State acknowledged that the party enjoyed tens of thousands of support in terms of votes in all gubernatorial elections in the past in the State. With a quality candidate, serious mobilization of its machinery, and a formidable financial base, the APC as a ruling national political party will enjoy the benefits that APGA had enjoyed in the past years and will be in a position to turn the tides in 2025.
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