Following the February 25 presidential election, governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has explained the main reasons Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) lost to Peter Obi of the Labour Party in the state.
Before the election, it was believed that Tinubu, the former governor of Lagos would defeat Obi in the state by a landslide.
Lagos since 1999 has been Tinubu’s political stronghold. He's the main political godfather whose party has been ruling the state for over two decades.
Interestingly, despite his political power and popularity in Lagos, he lost to Obi in the state in the February 25 presidential election. The former governor of Anambra state polled 582,454 votes, while trailed behind him with 572, 606 votes.
Obi’s victory in Lagos has put Tinubu’s political structure in the state to the test as residents of the state prepare for the March 11 governorship and house of assembly election.
However, while speaking on Arise TV on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, Sanwo-Olu identified three major reasons Obi defeated Tinubu in Lagos.
According to him, the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket played a role in Tinubu’s loss to Obi. Sanwo-Olu said Lagos has a lot of Christian population and many of them voted for the LP candidate, who is also a Christian.
The governor also identified ethnicity as one of the factors that worked against Tinubu in the election. He said some voters in Lagos voted for Obi because he belongs to their ethnic group.
“Some people said that from their own ethnic nationality, this is the first time they’re having a son on the ballot. He is good, he’s not good, na my picking and I’m going to go ahead and deal with it. So we cannot force anybody if that’s the beauty of democracy”, Sanwo-Olu said.
He submitted that the third reason Tinubu lost to Obi was due to the party’s crisis in Lagos. The governor said the APC in Lagos failed to resolve its internal wrangling before the election.
“The third reason is that we ourselves have our own internal wrangling and we have our internal issues that we were not able to resolve or we haven’t resolved fully before we went into the election”, Sanwo-Olu said.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Tinubu as the winner of the election on Wednesday, March 1, 2023, but the Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have rejected the result of the election citing irregularities.
