CANDIDATE of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Segun Oni has rejected the outcome of the just concluded Ekiti State governorship election won by Biodun Oyebanji of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The ICIR had reported that Oyebanji, who was the immediate former Secretary to the State Government (SSG), polled 187,057 votes to defeat Oni, who came second with 82,211 votes.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Bisi Kolawole came third with 67,457 votes.
According to the result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Oyebanji won in 15 Local Government Areas of the state.
However, reacting to the outcome of the election through the spokesman of his campaign organisation Moses Jolayemi, Oni said he won’t concede defeat because the election was marred by vote buying.
He has also accused INEC and security agencies of aiding the vote buying that characterised the poll.
“The outcome is unacceptable to us as a party because it is a travesty of democracy; it is a rape on democracy and clear daylight robbery,” Jolayemi said.
“The APC has taken advantage of the peoples’ pathetic state of poverty, and that is why 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 N5000 by six, it gives you N30,000, which is a huge amount to these people.
“The security agencies compromised. The ‘see and buy thing’ was going on while the security agencies looked the other way.
“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.”
He also noted that the election “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,” he added.
Jolayemi disclosed that the SDP will meet to decide whether to contest the outcome of the election at the tribunal.
“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.”
You can reach out to me on Twitter via: vincent_ufuoma