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Who won and who lost the game of politics this year?

An ever-present feature of politics is there are winners and there are losers.

Politicians, public office holders, and even political parties either have a year to remember or one they're very eager to forget.

This year was not an exception for those lucky or unlucky to make this list:

Winners

Charles Soludo

An election is a very clear metric for determining who's a winner and who's a loser; and Charles Soludo is a clear winner on just that note, emerging victorious in the Anambra State governorship election.

The former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor triumphed over a highly-competitive field that included rivals like Valentine Ozigbo, veteran election winner, Andy Uba, and Ifeanyi Ubah, who's currently a senator.

His victory wasn't some fluke too, scoring more than double the votes of second-placed Ozigbo, and winning in 19 of the 21 local government areas of Anambra.

The story of Soludo's rise to political power makes his November victory all the more dramatic, coming off the back of failures starting 12 years ago.

He finished third in the 2010 election as a candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and was disqualified from contesting for the ticket of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in 2013.

He came close to missing out this year too due to an internal crisis in the APGA, and needed a Supreme Court order to legitimise his mandate.

"This is a divine journey whose time has come," Soludo said in his acceptance speech.

It's hard to argue with him.

Samuel Ortom

In 2018, Adams Oshiomhole was an untouchable man mostly because he was leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) controlling the Federal Government.

In this capacity, sitting on his ivory tower, he could say anything about anyone, no matter how outrageous those things sounded.

Samuel Ortom, Benue State governor, was one of his most usual targets.

As a critic of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration's handling of the herders-farmers' crisis, Ortom was considered public enemy number one by Oshiomhole, even though they belonged to the same party at the time.

In one of his verbal attacks, he implied that he suspected the governor was involved in the murder of two Catholic priests who were killed alongside 17 parishioners by gunmen who attacked Ayar Mbalon village, Gwer East LGA of Benue in April 2018.

Ortom promptly sued Oshiomhole, a former Edo governor, to court and demanded N10 billion for the libelous statement against him and the case dragged on in court, past the time of Oshiomhole's inglorious fall from grace as APC chairman last year.

He finally apologised in a national newspaper in March 2021, the result of an out-of-court settlement he desperately sought.

"Owing to the relationship we share and in the larger interest of peace, harmony, and brotherliness, I believe a complete and unequivocal retraction of my comments made on 27th July, 2018, and which Dr Samuel Ortom found offensive, is proper and necessary," the former governor said.

The victory for Ortom here is less about his masterful governance of Benue, and more a victory for apologies rarely ever seen in Nigerian politics.

But he also did escape an attempted assassination, so he's been such a lucky guy this year.

Losers

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

As a party positioning to retake control of the Federal Government in 2023, the PDP has had a very eventful year it should hope to put behind it.

The party ended last year with the loss of Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State to the APC, despite its very public boasts that such monumental moves would be in its own direction.

This year, the party managed to lose two more governors to the APC, all before it was even July.

Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River, and Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara both made the high profile jumps that clearly rattled the PDP.

Governors, and their control of party and state machinery, are quite vital to winning national elections, making the defections a sore point for the party hoping to re-enter Aso Rock.

As a fallout of the governors' moves, the PDP has also lost dozens of lawmakers to the APC, way more than it has got in return.

Its attempts to punish the defectors in Zamfara, especially Matawalle, with court action that would make them lose their seats have not progressed expeditiously in court.

Outside of its defection woes, the PDP has also been dogged by an internal crisis that rumbled for months, but concluded neatly with the election of new national officers at October's convention.

Uche Secondus

Uche Secondus started the year as the national chairman of the PDP, but is ending it as a footnote of a crisis that threatened to tear the party apart.

Once heralded as a calming influence that masterminded the party's considerable success at the polls in 2019, this was the year that the magic was completely lost.

The 66-year-old's leadership was increasingly called into question by party factions eager to cut his tenure short.

His alleged mismanagement of the party was blamed for the party's loss of three governors and numerous lawmakers to the APC since last year.

He was defiant against many calls to resign until his time as national chairman came to an unceremonial end when Iyorcha Ayu was voted as his replacement at the October convention he desperately tried to stop with court action.

PDP might be ending the year on a good narrative spin with the convention, but Secondus will spend it licking his wounds.

Lauretta Onochie

President Buhari did his best this year to shove his own personal assistant and APC vuvuzela, Lauretta Onochie, into the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), but was met with intense national scrutiny that led to its ultimate failure.

The president nominated Onochie as a National Commissioner for the electoral body, asking the Senate to confirm her as a member of one of the country's most non-partisan agencies.

Many critics had a problem with the nomination because of the obvious partisanship of the nominee, and her history of public conduct against opposition parties and politicians.

She tried to drown the objection to her nomination by claiming she'd stopped engaging in partisan politics since Buhari's re-election in 2019, an outrageous claim that fooled no one except the Senate committee that screened her.

Onochie's nomination was ultimately rejected by the Senate, but not for the same reason that everyone wanted.

She was rejected on the technical claim that someone else from her native Delta State was already currently serving as a National Commissioner, making her ineligible.

The Senate Committee on INEC crucially ruled that she's qualified to be an INEC official because her partisanship was history and didn't affect her nomination.

This means the only thing stopping her confirmation is a fellow Delta State appointee whose INEC tenure ends this month.

So while Onochie may be ending 2021 having lost out on a position she very obviously wanted, she's not completely out and could be back in the nomination pot again next year.