Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor, has said that but for the “Peter Obi effect”, he would have defeated Babajide Sanwo-Olu in the 2023 governorship election.
Jandor, then-candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, stated this on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.
“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.
Jandor’s political history started with APC before he left the party with his Lagos4Lagos Movement, a bloc within the ruling party in 2022. He joined the PDP before the 2023 election and emerged governorship candidate in Lagos.
He, however, dumped the PDP recently after he accused some leaders of the party of sabotaging him. “We were waiting to see if the party at the national level governed by the constitution of the party would look into the provisions of that constitution and say that for engaging in anti-party activities openly, this is the sanction.
“We waited patiently for two years and see whether that would happen, instead of that, the same person was appointed Vice Chairman, Disciplinary Committee by the national,” he said.
Jandor, however, said he would consider joining any of the available parties to realise his 2027 governorship dream.