Former candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor, has opined that the effect of the Labour Party (LP) 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, stopped him from defeating the incumbent governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, in the 2023 gubernatorial election.
Naija News recalls that Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) polled a total of 762,134 votes, defeating LP’s candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, who scored 312,329 votes, followed by Jandor with 62,449 votes.
At the presidential election, which was held before the gubernatorial election, Peter Obi defeated the APC candidate, Bola Tinubu, in Lagos State.
Peter Obi polled 582,454 votes to trounce the former Lagos State governor, who scored 572,606 votes, PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, who got 75,750 and the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, who polled 8,442.
In an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, Jandor said the 2023 election came with peculiar dynamics and a tsunami that nobody ever expected, and it was there for everybody to see.
According to Jandor, after Peter Obi won the February 2023 presidential election in Lagos, the dynamics changed against the PDP for the governorship poll conducted one month later.
He said, “The 2023 election came with this Tsunami that nobody ever expected and it was there for everybody to see.
“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.
“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.”
“If not for the Peter Obi effect, I probably would have won the election at the governorship level.”
