Taraba Election: How Governor Ishaku's Performance is Endangering the Chances of the PDP

Political analysts will be watching Saturday's governorship election closely to see who will succeed Taraba State's Darius Ishaku.

There are five major candidates, including Senator Emmanuel Bwacha of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Kefas Agbu of the incumbent Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Joel Danlami Ikenya of the Labour Party (LP), Professor Sani Yahaya of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), and Danladi Baido of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), but the APC and PDP are the two front-runners.

There is no guarantee that the PDP would prevail in the March 18 poll, unlike in past gubernatorial elections where the party would often cruise to victory and claim the keys to Government House on a platter of gold.

In spite of the fact that Taraba has historically been a PDP state since the start of democracy in 1999, the possibility of an APC victory on Saturday looms at the time this story was submitted.

The opposition party is posing a greater threat to the ruling PDP than ever before, not because Kefas Agbu is a weak candidate, but rather because of the poor politics used by outgoing governor Darius Dickson Ishaku, whose electioneering campaign promises during his two terms in office were not kept.

Many people thought that Ishaku's claimed "sins" would prevent the party's nominee from winning on Saturday.

The PDP leadership has been putting in a lot of effort to prevent the failure of the current governor from costing the party the election. They are aware of this terrible menace.

A few of the party's key players claimed to have been addressing the glaring flaw.

“We have resolved to go back to the drawing board in order to ensure that what happened in the presidential and National Assembly elections doesn’t repeat itself this weekend,”

The stakeholder who went on to mention the governor's low showing in the election for his senatorial constituency said: “The same feat might likely replay itself on Saturday because we are very much aware that the people are aggrieved and against him.”

The concerned party, who insisted on remaining anonymous, also voiced sorrow at the governor's reported unwillingness to support the party's and the governorship candidate's political campaign.

He stated: “Could you believe that our governor has not been going out with our candidate for campaign? The situation became worse since he lost his senatorial election.”

While the party's leadership expressed confidence that the PDP will win through its spokesman, Andeta'rang Irammae, other party chieftains stated that everyone needed to be on their game to win.

The governor was unable to deliver for either himself or Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, the presidential candidate of his party, in the senate race.

Candidates from other parties, including as the NNPP, LP, and SDP, are similarly confident about winning the election.

Though none of these three political parties poses a threat to the PDP or APC, if religion is allowed to dominate the election and eligible voters cast their ballots based on their religion, the NNPP candidate—the only Muslim candidate among the five contenders—might end up causing a shock and the PDP and APC's hopes may turn out to be a mirage.

The competition is unquestionably going to be fascinating.

But one thing is certain: The Taraba PDP's chances of winning the election would undoubtedly be harmed by the dismal performance of the outgoing governor, who by all accounts appears to have ran out of ideas for how to improve the state from where he found it.