New Telegraph

Declare Ikorodu West Chairmanship primaries inconclusive, aspirant urges APC

 

Tony Okuyeme

One of the chairmanship aspirants in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) primary elections in Ikorodu West LCDA, held last Saturday, Prince Samuel Adegboyega Oyebola (a.k.a. Ologijo), has described the election as inconclusive.
He noted that the election was marred by violence and snatching of ballot box in some of the wards, especially in ward A (Ipakodo).
He is, however, confident that the party will take necessary action and do the needful as many of the voters were unable to vote due, also, to the late arrival of INEC officials.
Oyebola, who stated this in a chat with journalists, however, urged his supporters to remain calm and eschew violence in the interest of the party.
“I will describe it has being inconclusive. So many thing transpired within the LCDA. For example, the ballot box in ward A (Ipakodo) did not even get to the returning officer before they left to Lagos and they ended up leaving the ballot box at the police station in Ipakodo.
“And in Ward B, I was even there myself. You cannot even identify the agent and the electoral officers  because touts took over the centre and were the ones giving ballot papers to the people themselves and were asking them who do they wanted to vote.
“I had to rush to the soldiers and police officers stationed nearby to call their attention to it and urged them to put the situation under control,” he said.
According to him, by the time the soldiers intervened the deed has been done in favour of their choice aspirant of the touts.
“In Ward C (Owutu), the electoral official arrived at the centre at 1:30pm and left around 3:30pm when we still had about 100 people lining up to vote.
“The whole thing was scattered and the people were asking what kind of primary election. It was horrible in Ward D (Ajaguro), where touts took the boxes away and OPC men had to run after them. But before they could retrieve them, they were already loaded with ballot papers. All the leaders and party members at the centre had to run for their lives,” he said.
“I am appealing to our great party which I trust will do something quickly by making pronouncements that will bring peace and prevent the situation from escalating into any trouble. Our members are not happy at all. I am sure that the party will do something about it because most of them did not even vote despite the fact that the party did well by asking us to go the primary election for people to choose and vote for the right person.”
Asked about his message to his supporters, Oyebola said: “My message to my supporters is to know that the party is supreme and there is nothing we aspirants can do other than to only express our dissatisfaction at the process to the party.
“I have been appealing to them to calm down until the party makes its  decision. We have to look up to the party because we know that the party has solid structure and our National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will not tell us to go to the primary if he doesn’t mean it.”

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