In an emotional world press conference held in Lagos on Wednesday, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, the governorship candidate of the Labour Party in the March 18 governorship election in Lagos State, said that the president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in-coming government will disenfranchise and suppress the will of the people, creating a one-party militarized state in the process.
He based his claims on the events surrounding the pre-gubernatorial March 18 election, during the election, and events after the conduct of the election, where thugs alleged to be members of the APC terrorized, maimed, brutalized, and killed law-abiding Lagosians who only wanted to exercise their rights to choose their leaders through the ballot.
He said, “The same people responsible for the things that I have listed have weaponized poverty and ethnicity to distract us from their evil endeavours and diabolical activities. We will never have free and fair elections under a Tinubu presidency because we can predict from their antecedents what is to come. Instead, we will have a military-type one-party system that seeks to disenfranchise and suppress people as opposed to engaging the people selling their mandate.”
Filled with emotions about the casualties from these dastardly acts perpetuated by these blood sucking people, he presented graphic accounts of Lagosians who had been injured, hospitalized, and one particular person who died on his way to give this press briefing.
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He accused the APC of orchestrating the violent acts on the election day, insisting that the party had unfortunately placed a traditional rite event called the Orò festival on the week of the election so that they could disenfranchise most people.
He promised that he and the Labour Party would take up the hospital bills of the many people injured by these thugs who tried to subvert the will of the people. He urged those affected and receiving treatment to log into www.grvcares2023.com and upload their hospital bills, along with a police report where applicable and other supporting documents.
“And it is not just lip service; today we launch the platform called www.grvcares2023.com. Please, anyone that has been a victim of electoral violence, log on to this website, upload evidence of this violence, including your hospital bills and the police report if you have it, and we will upset your hospital bills. Because empathy and love are more than just words; they are actions,” he explained.
Please find below an excerpt of his statement:
“Good afternoon, Lagos, I start by once again thanking Lagosians for their courage in making decisions based on hope and resisting the fear that the ruling party tried to put in them and who came out in spite of that as they showed remarkable courage—I want to thank Lagos for that. Our message for when we first started and is still till today, his excellence, Peter Obi and myself has always been about empathy, love, good governance that is both open and accountable.
“Yesterday I spent my day visiting victims of state-backed terrorism and violence from Abule Ado to Surulere to Apapa to Ikeja. I met young men and women that had bullet holes in their chins and their faces, and just as I was about to come and sit here, I was told that one of our polling agents in ward K1 had just passed away. I met and saw people with cuts all over their bodies, young men with factures that we had to spend over N800,000 for their surgeries, and I want to take this moment to reach out to all of these people who, in spite of all the attempts to put fear in them, stood against it and came out in hope and courage—that I am with you, the party, and I are with you.
“And it is not just lip service; today we launch the platform called www.grvcares2023.com. Please, anyone that has been a victim of electoral violence, log on to this website, upload evidence of this violence, including your hospital bills and the police report if you have it, and we will upset your hospital bills. Because empathy and love is not just lip service is in the action. And for the people who came out in hope and courage, we are going to show that we stand by you, that we value you, and that we appreciate you.
“Yesterday, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu called for healing, but healing cannot happen without justice. The APC unleashed evil on Lagosians, both spiritually with their fetishistic diabolic rites that were done during the day and physically with the violence that was unleashed on all Lagosians. There is an attempt to make it look like it was a Yoruba vs. Igbo situation that was limited to certain areas, but it was widespread across Lagos.
“Everybody was affected; everybody was disenfranchised. Yet they want peace. It is not really peace that they want; they want the peace of a graveyard. They want the healing of the dead. The thrust of my message is more directed at the evil cult organization of the APC, but it is also directed at the indigenous Lagosians and Lagosians at large: we cannot afford to have an “agberocracy”, a militant type of government, in Lagos State. We all believe that we have gone past this type of politics; we all believe that democracy has been deepened, but we saw not just violence and diabolic means of trying to restrain and belittle the people of Lagos to create a one-party state; all the way from Ikoyi to Ikeja to Ikorodu, people were disenfranchised.
“They could not campaign based on their past records, so they stoked ethnic strife for the ambition of one man and his cult. The entire credibility that INEC had built over the last four years was ripped to shreds in one day.
“For the ambition of one man and his cult, we saw the traditional institutions reduced to pawns, to tools, and rites that were supposed to be done at night and witnessed by only the people initiated into the ORO institution were being done during the day, invoking in broad daylight the spell that Senator Tinubu and his cult have used to keep Lagos bound. There was no election in Lagos State; it was violence at multiple levels, physically and diabolically. On this ambition, they sowed seeds that potentially could lead to things we see in other countries like the Rwanda genocide.
“My dear Lagosians, our enemies are not our neighbours, or our visitors, or our fellow Lagosians. Regardless of their diverse tongues, our common enemy is violence, insecurity, poverty, stagnation, corruption, and underdevelopment. The same people responsible for the things that I have listed have weaponized poverty and ethnicity to distract us from their evil endeavours and diabolical activities. We will never have free and fair elections under a Tinubu presidency because we can predict from their antecedents what is to come. Instead, we will have a military-type one-party system that seeks to disenfranchise and suppress people as opposed to engaging the people selling their mandate.
“They have tried to destroy years of balanced ethnic relations, years of intermarriage and friendships, years of commerce, and years of building Lagos into the economic juggernaut that it is. I call on the silent majority, the decent and cultured Lagosians, to speak out. Silence in this regard is not golden. Silence in this regards is acceptance and support and we cannot be silence.”
