Mr Segun Oni of the Social Democratic Party who scored 82,211 in the just concluded Ekiti governorship elections says the reasons he is rejecting the outcome of the election is due to cases of ballot snatching and vote buying conducted by the All Progressive Congress in the Ekiti election.
This was disclosed by Moses Olayemi, the media aide to Segun Oni in an interview with Channels TV on Sunday night.
Biodun Oyebanji, former secretary to the state government (SSG) and the Governorship candidate of the APC won the election with 187,057 votes. The SDP claims that the APC paid between N7,000 to N10,000 to buy votes, also accusing them of taking advantage of the poverty in the state.
Olayemi said: “We are shocked, nobody expected they could take it this far, we have always known that APC was not sincere about the entire process. We did not know they were going to take it this far
He added that the SDP did not know APC was going to depart from all electoral laws a day before the election, citing that all the parties signed a peace accord, and it was believed that they would all abide by that, especially the APC.
“But on the day of the elections, what we saw was a bad display everywhere,
“There is a man, or you must have seen the reports on social media, who had been hired by Fayemi’s government who is also chairman of the drivers’ union, who we have been talking about that was hired to get thugs and distract the process, and what we saw was snatching of ballot boxes.
“So many places that ballot snatching took place, when you snatch a ballot box what do you want to do with it? It is obviously for vote manipulation,” he said.
“What we saw, was clear evidence of vote-buying, that’s why APC never bothered to campaign that much, we were everywhere, and we were wondering why they were so confident and relaxed, not knowing that everything was to be on vote-buying,” he added.
Olayemi said he saw the voter manipulation and raised alarm, however, security agents looked the other way, citing that these are the people the SDP suspects have been compromised.
He stated that Segun Oni says the election result is unacceptable, he is rejecting the election, if the election had gone well, he would have been the first to congratulate his opponents.
“We felt this is an opportunity to rescue Ekiti from what the state is going through. These guys (APC) will never release Ekiti people from their strangle.
“They were giving N10,000 per voter in some places, and in some N7,000 per voter, taking undue advantage of the peoples poverty situation,” he said.
- INEC declared Biodun Oyebanji, former secretary to the state government (SSG) and the Governorship candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the just concluded Ekiti State Governorship election, the winner of the Ekiti governorship election.
- Oyebanji polled 187,057 votes. His closest challenger, Mr Segun Oni, of the Social Democratic Party, scored 82,211 votes.
- While the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Bisi Kolawole, scored 67,457 votes. Kolawole won his LGA, Efon, where he scored 6,303 to beat APC’s 4,012 and SDP’s 339 votes.
- Nairametrics also reported that A group of NGOs and media outlets who were deployed at several election observers decried the alarming incidents of vote-buying recorded at various polling units at the ongoing election in Ekiti State.
- The Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) in conjunction with ICIR and other media platforms said: “Party agents have been seen to be at loggerheads with security personnel over their disconcerting proximity to the voting booths.
- “Some have been observed to be taking down names of voters in order to facilitate payments and they were also reportedly forcefully ‘assisting’ voters in a ploy to manipulate them. We would like to remind the public that this is an electoral offence punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment and we call on political parties and INEC to investigate these matters.”
