As the October 10 governorship election in Ondo State draws closer, a political group tagged, ‘Coalition 2020 Platform’, on Tuesday allegedly tore apart over N10 million largess which was collected from Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as part of the political move to adopt him as their candidate.
BusinessDay reports that the ‘Coalition 2020 Platform’ being led by Akin Akinbobola, conducted an mock election in order to know the candidate to support in the forthcoming gubernatorial election.
Governor Akeredolu, however, defeated trio candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, Eyitayo Jegede; his deputy, Agboola Ajayi, who is contesting on the platform of the Zenith Labour Party and Dapo Adelegan of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) that had sought the support of the group respectively ahead of the gubernatorial election.
But the pioneer chairman of the group, Bamiduro Dada along side some members disagreed with the conduct of the election, having observed that those who were picked as the delegates of the member political parties and professional associations were strange people alleged to have been planted by APC against the wishes of the leadership of the group.
Dada, who protested the conduct of the election was arrested eventually by the Police on the order of his successor, Akinbobola, alleging that he had collected N10 million bribe from Governor Akeredolu so that the group would adopt the governor as the candidate to be supported.
After the fight that ensured during the election, Akeredolu scored 162 votes, his deputy Ajayi scored 89 votes, Jegede polled 67 votes while Dapo Adelegan of the ADC got 6 votes.
It was gathered that over 400 delegates participated in the mock election.
While speaking after announcing the result, Akinbobola said any party that won the mock election would win the October 10 governorship polls.
He said members of the ‘Coalition 2020’ changed their mind about their quest to stop Akeredolu’s second term bid after meeting and listening to him.
“The outcome is a reflection of the thinking of Ondo state people. There must be complaints but majority of the people have spoken.
“This Coalition has adopted the APC as our party that we will support. We will work to ensure APC candidate emerge winner of the October 10 governorship election”, he said.
