June 19, (THEWILL) – The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the just-concluded Ekiti governorship election, Olabisi Kolawole, has conceded defeat and congratulated the winner and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Biodun Oyebanji.
THEWILL reports that Oyebanji won the Ekiti guber election, polling 187,057 votes to defeat the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Segun Oni, who scored 82, 211 votes and Kolawole with 67,457 votes.
Kolawole in a congratulatory letter he personally signed and addressed to Oyebanji, said, power belongs to God and “bestows upon whoever he chooses.”
The letter reads: “Following the announcement of your victory in the June 18 Ekiti Governorship Election, by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), I, hereby, write to congratulate you accordingly.
“I believe that power belongs to God and He bestows upon whoever he chooses.
“I also believe in popular choice that the unfettered expression of the peoples mandates, as one of the crucial hallmarks of democratic principle and practice.
“Democracy must, therefore, deliver to the people dividends of security or protection and enhance their social welfare and well-being basically, and among other deliverables.
“These were the motivation for my own ambition in the governorship of Ekiti State, which I feel strongly to reiterate here in view of the precarious situations of our people at the moment.
“Please take urgent actions aimed at redressing the plights of our people when you fully assume the mantle shortly.
“Finally, I wish you the guidance of the Almighty God in the onerous task ahead.
Congratulations to your spouse and also running mate.”
Meanwhile, the Campaign Organisation of Segun Oni, governorship candidate of the SDP, has rejected the outcome of the election.
Reacting to the outcome of the exercise, spokesman of the campaign organisation, Moses Jolayemi, accused the APC of engaging in vote-buying, and security agencies of compromise.
Jolayemi said: “The outcome is unacceptable by us as a party, because it is a travesty of democracy, it is a rape on democracy and clear daylight robbery, the APC has taken advantage of the peoples’ pathetic state of poverty and that is why you see that the APC refused to campaign. They were not going round doing rallies; we were the ones campaigning because they knew what they wanted to do.
“Their strategy was simple: buy these peoples’ votes and that is why they kept the people in perpetual poverty, so that they can be of use every four years.
“They know that it is difficult for someone who is very hungry to resist cash. Some of them have children that are of voting age; some have four children plus their wife and themselves. “If you multiply N5,000 by six, it gives you N30,000, which is a huge amount to these people.
“To make this kind of money huge and important, that is why they (APC) have kept them in that financial bondage.
“In the United States of America, for example, it will be foolhardy for anyone to envelope $10 or $20 for people to vote.
“They will be asking you if you are okay or if you have not gone crazy because what are they going to do with it?
“The basic things of life have been taken off by the government, but here, their dignity is already taken off them with the way the APC has kept them.
“The security agencies compromised. The see and buy thing was going on while the security agencies looked. The other INEC is also culpable because the arrangement of the polling booth and the ballot boxes was awkward. You wonder why this should be so. The election may appear free, but it was not fair.
“It was not free of violence anyway because the third thing they did was to make use of their thugs.
“We have videos of some of their thugs snatching ballot boxes. What did the security agents do, they looked the other way.”
When asked whether the SDP will be approaching the tribunal to seek redress, he said: “The decision will be taken in the next few hours. We are going to meet, but the central message here is that this election is rejected. Segun Oni is not accepting the results, he is not conceding and he is not congratulating anybody because this is not an election.”
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