By Segun Olatunji
In the high-wire theatre of politics in Ogun State, where until the recent past “parallel primaries” were common features like the traffic on the Isheri Long Bridge, Abayomi Semako Hunye’s recent bid for the 2027 governorship ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress has provided the kernels for more entertainment than any comedy club in any part of the country. It’s in character and content a political skit in which Hunye himself emerged the latest headline act.
While official party machinery worked towards a consensus, Hunye’s campaign emerged from the blues as a “fitful breeze” – noisy enough to rattle the aged window panes in his village in Ipokia, but far too weak to bring down the mud house.
Following the official declaration of Senator Solomon Olamillekan Adeola Yayi as the winner of the APC direct primary election and the party’s duly elected flagbearer in Ogun State with a total 304,055 massive votes, Hunye kicked and swiftly claimed victory, awarding himself 453,765 votes, a figure far and above the total figure of the accredited voters that participated in the party primary.
For Hunye, Senator Yayi’s official declaration as the Ogun APC duly elected governorship candidate didn’t truly reflect the wishes of party members who voted in the primary election. Haba!
For a fact, Hunye’s claim to victory is nothing more than a political absurdity, rather than a legitimate outcome. Official committee for the exercise confirmed that the party’s consensus candidate won in a landslide, rendering Hunye’s self-declaration of victory a fitful breeze – a brief noisy disturbance that failed to raise the state’s political temperature.
On the primary election day, while reports of him “defeating Yayi in his ward” hit the social media, the actual collation centre was recording a zero vote for him. Imagine being in a two-man race and the other guy scores all the votes while you get just zero from the bag of “agbalumo” star fruit.
Yet, Hunye funnily declared himself the winner despite lacking official electoral committee backing. Neither accredited observers nor party officials verified his specific “victory” results. No wonder his move is being viewed by many in the state as a desperate bid for relevance and a tactical distraction for attention.
The APC NWC has recognised the official results as presented by its officially appointed committee for the exercise. For statutory backing, INEC monitors documented the primary, and their reports do not align with Hunye’s concocted figures. Not only that, Hunye’s claim has no legal “legs” to stand on and so lacks the legal weight to challenge the results of the primary election.
His has been a theatre of the absurd – Hunye, in a political move that left political observers’ lips hanging agape, and reaching for some corn cobs to “chuck” them, recently purchased the N50million APC nomination forms, effectively declaring war on the ruling party’s consensus governorship candidate.
In past primary and election cycles, challengers in the state have often claimed victory in remote wards while accredited party delegates were busy voting at the designated centre. While official results often indicate incumbents winning with thousands of votes, parallel claims and phantom victories like Hunye’s usually rely on “alternative facts” suggesting he has hundreds of thousands of supporters – on paper.
To begin his Baba Sala awada kerikeri comedy show, Hunye surprisingly dropped N50million for nomination forms in these hard times and harsh economy! He simply dropped the huge sum as if he was buying a loaf of Agege bread from a roadside hawker. Bemused officials at the APC National Headquarters in Abuja collected the money with a rueful smile, issued him a receipt and wished him more of God’s blessings in his “hustles.” Of course, this isn’t just about ambition, it’s a charitable donation to the APC national headquarters’ war chest for the 2027 general elections. But that whopping N50million largesse is enough to fetch the peasant farmers in the aspirant’s village some comfort in terms of some public infrastructure and empowerment.
Or better still, that humongous amount could have bought enough fufu and ewedu to feed hungry people in his village for one year. Rather, he used the “largesse” to buy himself a ticket for a front-row seat in a cinema premiering his absurdity and disgrace. As expected, the party took his money, but promptly forgot he existed until the evening the results of the primary were being reeled out.
Willy-nilly, Hunye bought the APC nomination forms only to officially become the most expensive “spectator” in Ogun political history. While the official APC committee was busy collating the votes for its duly elected governorship candidate, Hunye was reportedly off in a different dimension, engaged in a reverie in his own dreamland, his own world. In his own press release, he had won the APC primary by a landslide, forgetting that it would take a special kind of talent to count votes that haven’t been cast and see crowds that never arrived at the various polling centres. Hunye was however eventually rudely awakened from his daydreaming by the cold fact that he had only scored votes so low they could be mistaken for a typographical error.
From the official results, it’s crystal clear that even Hunye’s own shadow refused to cast its vote for him, just like the man who sold the APC nomination forms to him in the first place. It takes a special kind of “parallel universe” to claim you defeated an incumbent Senator in his own ward the previous day, only for the official scoreboard the next day to confirm you have the same number of votes as a contestant who didn’t even show up for the exercise.
But to complete the absurdity in Hunye’s claim, reports even surfaced of this comedian of the famous Baba Sala awada kerikeri comedy school defeating a political heavyweight and ranking incumbent Senator like Solomon Olamillekan Adeola Yayi at his own ward level – a feat one finds more miraculous than the controversies that attended the 2022 Naira redesign hullabaloo.
While the APC primary election committee was counting votes at the collation centre, Hunye was busy in his bedroom performing “spirit-filled mathematics” and eventually announced a landslide victory from his own “collation centre.” With his uncanny political ability, Hunye used Primary Six Common Entrance Arithmetic to solve advanced mathematics for a Phd problem in record time.
His self-declared victory in the APC governorship primary election isn’t just a political claim; it’s a masterclass in delusional choreography. Fact remains he’s yet to come to terms with the reality that in Nigerian politics, scoring zero isn’t just an ordinary loss, it’s a spiritual message from your ancestors to go back to your “oko aaro” day job.
Hunye has only succeeded in what we call in Lagos parlance “initial gragra”. He has only made enough “gbudu-gbudu” to gain attention and make people think the table is about to turn. Although Hunye’s fitful breeze blew, “the fowl nyash” has refused to open because there was even none in the first place. Before the INEC monitors could finish gulping their bottled water, Hunye’s comedic, self-declared victory had vanished like Abacha toxic fuel poured into a hot generator.
However, despite Hunye’s comedic optics, the APC National Working Committee (NWC) remains the ultimate director of this play written by this hallucinating aspirant. The party will only officially acknowledge primary elections supervised by its appointed electoral committee.
Barely recovering from his resignation rows, Hunye recently had to vehemently deny being sacked from the Ogun State Waste Management Authority (OGWAMA), claiming to have rather voluntarily resigned to pursue his “governorship dream.” But in actual fact, he gave up his job, presumably, to start “cleaning up” the gubernatorial race track. But while he was busy proving he wasn’t “sacked” from OGWAMA, voters treated his governorship aspiration with the contempt reserved for the cockroach inside their toilets.
Hunye busied himself with fighting “calumny” so much so that he forgot to ask even his family members to remember to cast their votes for him at the APC primary election. And just like the refuse he used to manage at OGWAMA, his “supporters” simply cleared his “guber aspiration” away into the sewage.
Now, Hunye has trapped himself in his own zero-sum game. In previous primary elections, most challengers like Hunye scored zero votes while the official candidate swept the floor in a landslide. Therefore, Hunye’s self-declared victory highlights the usual noise that precedes every election cycle just to raise a brief turbulence. But like a desert dust-up, such claims usually last only until the NWC issues the certificate of return. Noise like that of Hunye is a mere distraction serving the purpose of a tool for negotiation rather than a serious path to the Governor’s office.
Unfortunately, the established Ogun APC machinery rarely bends for those who only win in their own malaria-induced dreams and hallucinatory press statements. In Ogun politics, if you’re not winning with the people’s support and major party stakeholders’ blessings, you’re actually not victorious – no matter how many N50million party receipts you display in the media.
Forgetting that Ogun is renowned as a state blessed with a sophisticated electorate, Hunye treated the APC governorship primary election like a ruler strenuously waved with a string tied to its tip, which we used in our growing up days to make the “oro” cult “woo woo” sound.
Hunye made enough noise to rattle the windows of those old, dilapidated huts in his village. And like a fitful breeze, his noise fizzled through the media, ruffled not even a “buba” and immediately vanished even before the ink on the primary election result sheets dried up. Faster than the popular Lagos Danfo bus changes lane, Hunye went in his dreamy reverie from “Your Excellency-in-Waiting” to the reality of a “Wait, who is he again?” Hunye in his own wisdom, believes you don’t need a majority to win an election; for him, all you require is just a printer and very imaginative media team to knock out a hallucinatory press statement.
Hunye’s political misadventure in the APC primary election has ended up like a badly produced Nollywood movie where himself, as the lead actor, forgot he was not also the director in his N50million comedy flick.
With his self-declared victory, Hunye has won the APC governorship primary in his bedroom by ignoring the fact that politics is basically a game of “follow who knows the road”. Rather, with a crayon in his hands like a primary one school pupil, Hunye decided to create his own map. His recent self-declared victory in the APC primary has only given him that self-comforting feeling of “I can’t come and kill myself”, but with the more expensive price tag of a wasted N50million.
With the Ogun APC primary election done and dusted, and the winner officially declared, Hunye’s fitful breeze didn’t only fail to blow, it got trapped in a bottomless pit. His expending of a whopping N50million on nomination forms only to receive a “perfect zero votes” is probably the most generous Nigerian political “donation” in history. It is akin to buying a VIP ticket to a Lagbaja concert only to find out you are just the one performing while nobody, including the bouncers, showed up to applaud you. If Hunye’s disgraceful showing at the APC governorship primary election were a Nollywood movie, the director would have grown livid and angrily cut off the scene for its crass lack of reality.
One thing: our dear aspirant Hunye has indeed proved that one can actually buy the nomination forms, buy the most sartorial suit and elegant Agbada, prepare the sweetest “swearing-in” speech, and even purchase the radio and television airtime for a victory speech, but on election day, if the people and the major party stakeholders desert you, your N50million will just end up as an expensive means to find out that even your own village people were busy with processing their fufu and ewedu while you were sweating like a Christmas goat at the polling unit. Indeed, Hunye’s political misadventure and Baba Sala awada kerikeri comedy have been a lesson in how to waste a whopping N50million within 48 hours.
Yayi ni jo, Yayi ni jare!
Olatunji, a Journalist, Political/Crisis Communication Strategist, writes from Ilaro, Ogun State
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