Otedola's entry into governorship race is good for Lagosians

We should have known when he took to jumping aboard rickety

For a moment, he made us believe that his photo-ops had no pre-determined end. For a moment, he almost got us all fooled.

Oh well, the cat is now out of the bag, as they say. Journalist Dele Momodu was the one who broke the news on Tuesday, September 11, when he tweeted: “Breaking news: Lagos 2019 promises to be interesting. PDP offers Femi Otedola governorship ticket. He's accepted and personally confirmed to The Boss newspaper.”

In May, as rumours bordering on his governorship run assumed lives of their own,

“My attention has been drawn to a news piece where false information from a parody account was posted. I am a man of the people and I will always be on the side of the masses but I am stating clearly via this medium that I am not running for office”, he tweeted.

In March, Otedola even endorsed incumbent Governor Akinwunmi Ambode for a second term in office.

“He is building roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, water treatment plants, sewage and storm water drainages, solid waste management plants and mass transport infrastructure”, Otedola said of Ambode at the time.

Months later, Otedola is walking back his words like the typical politician he has become. His entry into the governorship race should jazz up a Lagos political space which has remained in the vice grip of the APC and its godfather Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for far too long, thereby fostering something of a dictatorship and echo chamber.

Lagos needs an array of colourful, competent, high profile candidates to choose from in 2019. The more, the merrier for Nigeria's commercial capital at this point. The PDP has been its own worst enemy—going to sleep as soon as one election cycle is over and not bothering to offer itself as an alternative platform with better policy proposals and ideals, in the interim.

Maybe the PDP is really broke. Which makes Otedola’s money very handy for the opposition party at this time. It will be nice to watch the Lagos governorship race shape into a contest that pits Tinubu’s stranglehold on Lagos against Otedola’s bottomless pit of money.

The internal battles within the APC, with Ambode not guaranteed a second term after finding himself on the wrong side of Tinubu, could also prove a huge benefit for the Otedola campaign.

But can Otedola win a state-wide election? I really don’t think so at the moment. Yes, he’s got instant name recognition and the cash to drive the kind of campaign he fancies, but the grassroot structure—from where elections are actually won—belong to the APC at this point. Otedola and the PDP, should he eventually emerge the party’s flagbearer, would really have their work cut out for them as they set out to tear down all of the APC’s imprimatur and structure in Alimosho, Mushin and Ikorodu for instance, erected since 1999. That's some tall order right there.

But there’s no better time for Otedola to stake a claim to Government House, Alausa, than now. Someone needs to give the APC a run for its (tainted) money in Lagos and Otedola fits that bill perfectly. He’s exactly what the doctor would have recommended for a PDP that seems unable to even find the resources to issue press statements these days.