How To Win Elections In Nigeria Using Fayose’s Model – Ogunsanwo Babajide

Ayo Fayose seemed to have used some rather unconventional election winning strategies. An objective analysis of the events before, during and after the election reveals four (4) tactics that he used. I call them Ayo Fayose’s Four Commandments – How to win elections in Nigeria.

1) Master the Art of Confusing your Enemies:

Ayo Fayose won because he is the godfather of the Ekiti ‘Area Boys’ – Fallacy 1. Fayose knew that this was false, but he did not attempt to change this perception. He used this as a powerful tool to deceive his opponents. His ‘thug affiliated perception’ made his opponents believe that he would get most of his votes from the low income earners.

Confidently, the opposition believed that Fayose was not going to get the sympathy or empathy of those that lived in the most urban areas. But ‘Fayooosh’, the name his supporters call him, used this propaganda to his advantage. The opposition’s strategy was simple – Break Fayose’s grip on the grass root and he will be finished.

Fayose knew that by making his opponents believe that he is primarily a grass root politician, they would let down their guard in the city. His opponents and some of the most experienced political analysts believed that he had little (if any) influence on the elitist voters. Again, Fayose did not attempt to change this perception.

So he allowed them bring the campaign battle to his perceived area of strength – ‘The Grass root’. Shockingly, his area of strength was in the city center. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reveals that Ado-Ekiti has a literacy rate of 83.1% (the highest in Ekiti State.) Clearly, Ado-Ekiti is where the most civilized citizens live.

So, why and how did Fayose win 74.7% of the votes in Ado-Ekiti? The 2014 gubernatorial election results in Ado Ekiti nullify the assumption that Fayose is a grass root politician.

2) The journey of transporting rice is the winning strategy, and not the distribution of the rice:

Yes, he distributed rice. But the evidence from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reveals that the people of Ekiti do not really like rice. The NBS consumer expenditure report reveals that the families that consume the highest daily quantity of rice in Nigeria live in Niger, Nassarawa, Osun, Kaduna and Kebbi State respectively.

Ekiti State is on the 27th position on the ladder of families that consume the most rice in Nigeria. The real strength of the state lies in transportation. A thorough analysis of the NBS report also reveals that apart from families that live in Abuja, Lagos and Oyo States, no other state beats Ekiti when it comes to how much people spend on moving around.

Again, Fayose tricked his opponents to believe that his strategy was rice distribution, when in fact his strategy was to ‘move people around’ and use rice distribution only as means to achieve this goal. In moving people around, Fayose was able to engage the people in what they really loved to do. – Moving Around! Moving them around also allowed him to grow his popularity and acceptance.

3) Population Distribution is still relevant in Nigerian Politics?:

Conventional wisdom says that a good campaign strategy would focus on the most populated local governments and not on all the local governments. The evidence from the election results show that Fayose did not try to win the hearts of all potential voters. He chose to concentrate on six local governments (Ado-Ekiti, Ikere, Ikole, Ijero, Ido Osi, Irepodun) out of the sixteen.

When the results came in, Fayose got 55% of all his votes from these six local governments. Here, Fayose adopted a simple strategy – local governments with high voters’ concentration are more important than those with just high population.

4) Focus on what the people have and not what you think they have

Social media marketing helps, but not for the Ekiti people. The Information Communication Technology (ICT) report from the NBS shows that only 0.5% of families in Ekiti own computers and only 2% have access to the internet.

Clearly, the voters in Ekiti did not see all the powerful tweets, beautiful videos, educated narratives and the well coordinated campaign adverts from Kayode Fayemi’s camp. Ayo Fayose had an insignificant social media network.

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