The All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairmanship primary election in Lagos State has been hit with accusations of electoral fraud emerging from Eti-Osa Local Government Area (LGA).
Recall that the APC local government chairmanship primaries for 20 LGAs and 37 local council development areas (LCDAs) were held on Saturday.
Despite the election being held amid a heavy presence of police operatives at the party secretariat on Acme Road, Ikeja, agents and delegates of Wasiu Yekini Babatunde, one of the chairmanship aspirants for Eti-Osa LGA, have come out to say that the election was manipulated to favour other contenders.
A particular agent, Mallam Jida Saheed, came out to say that he witnessed a broad daylight robbery during the voting process, stressing that agents were not even allowed to observe the elections, which affected the transparency of the polls.
According to him, the voting process was a complete sham because there is no logical explanation for a candidate with more than 15 delegates getting no votes at all.
Jida declared that what he witnessed was clearly an imposition, not an election, and APC leaders must look into it as soon as possible.
“What we saw wasn’t what we expected. First, when we came here, the agents were not allowed to be in the room where the delegates would vote in the election.
After the voting and the whole election had been concluded, they brought out the votes and said they would count the votes and that everything would be transparent. But unfortunately, what we saw was a broad daylight robbery.
It was a shame to our party because, how can an aspirant who has over 15 delegates, when the counting was going on, they said one aspirant scored 19 votes, another aspirant scored one vote, and our aspirant who the majority of the delegates voted for didn’t score anything.
This is an imposition and not an election. We are not going to accept it. The leaders should look into it and our mandate should be returned to our aspirant,” he said.
Jida revealed that the greed and selfishness of some APC leaders is the reason why the party lost the 2023 election to the Labour party, and it is obvious that the culprits didn’t learn anything from past mistakes.
“That was what they did that we lost the 2023 election. As we speak, in the 2023 election, we lost Eti-Osa Local Government to the Labour Party because of the greed and selfishness of our leaders, and they have done it again,” he added.
Backing Jida’s claims, several delegates, including Mr. Lawandi Abubakar, Mr. Alabi Olupekun, Hon. Akin Mustapha, Mr. Wasiu Owolabi, Mr. Rasheed Kokolowo, Mr. James Aderogu, Mr. Bello Olatunde, Mr. Maja Abide, Mr. Murtala Akinyu, and Mr. Olukunle Alabi, confirmed that they definitely voted for Wasiu Yekini Babatunde.
The delegates are of the opinion that since they all voted for Wasiu Yekini, and none of their votes were reflected in the final count, it is a clear case of electoral malpractice.
As of the time of this report, the APC Lagos State leadership has yet to issue any formal response to the allegations.
