• Friday, March 29, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Lagos guber poll: LP, AD reject result, head for tribunal

Lagos-election

The Lagos State chapters of opposition parties, Labour party (LP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) have rejected the result of the March 9 gubernatorial election in Lagos State, saying it was massively rigged by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in favour of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC).

The two parties at a joint press conference Sunday night, noted that the 2019 election was the worst election the country ever conducted in the country, stressing that the March 9 gubernatorial election in Lagos State was characterised by flaws, intimidation of voters, vote buying and cloning of Permanent Voters Card (PVCs).

Gubernatorial candidate of the Labour party, Awamaridi Ifagbemi said the party had petitioned the election tribunal for the cancellation of gubernatorial election result, stressing that the election was marred by irregularities, alleging that the APC cloned PVCs of members of opposition parties across the state.

“The governorship election was not free and fair,” he declared, alleging that the election was filled with corrupt practises and irregularities. So we are saying that the election should be nullified and declared invalid and another election should be made to happen in Lagos State,” he said.

“He said that as a gubernatorial candidate he could not vote because his PVC “was taken at INEC office and cloned. I went to the INEC office in Alimosho, the EO told the staff to look for it but they could not found it after a week.”

“Days to the election I was told that APC agent came and were distributing PVCs, they claimed they collected it from INEC office,” Ifagbemi said.

Lagos state AD chairman Kola Ajayi, disputed the number of votes giving to the party’s gubernatorial candidate by INEC in the election, accusing INEC of short-changing the party and its agent in the distribution of election materials, so it could rig the election to favour the APC.

INEC declared the candidate of the APC, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, winner of the election with 739,445 votes ahead of Jimi Agbaje, his closet rival and candidate of main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 206,141 votes.

“We knew that there were manipulations, vote buying, cloning of PVCs and all sort things. The position of AD is clear, our party is not an appendage of any leader in the APC, and it is not true. There is nothing like negotiation; we campaigned more than other party,” the AD chairman said.

“The figure given to AD we rejected it. We have more than 10, 000 members in Lagos State, even more than 50,000, for them to write 3,000 is robbery, there was no governorship election in Lagos state”, Ajayi said.

 

Iniobong Iwok