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Olusola Oke Faults ‘Corrupted’ Ondo APC Primary Election

September 16, 2016

Olusola Oke, an enraged gubernatorial aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ondo state, has disclosed that the final voting exercise of the Saturday September 3rd 2016 APC governorship primary election was marked by corruption.

Mr. Oke said the results that produced the opposition party candidate, Romiti Akeredolu, who scored 669 votes to emerge the winner of the contest among the twenty-four aspirants, was marred with irregularities.

He spoke on Friday at Adaba 88.9 FM Akure, during a special political programme that aired live on the privately owned radio station exclusively monitored by SaharaReporters.

Mr. Oke, who polled 583 votes to come third from behind during the poll, revealed that the process and outcome of the primary election was corruptly rooted because the delegate lists used for the hectic exercise was doctored and injected with fake names.

According to him, three hundred and eighty three (383) names were directly injected into the delegates’ list thereby altering the main configuration list that would have produced a rancor-free governorship primary election of the party after the Saturday poll.

He revealed during the one-on-one special radio interview that twenty-four of the aspirants who jostled for the APC governorship ticket were present in Abuja few weeks to the primary election and met with party’s National leaders for the aim of a transparent poll.

The APC chieftain, who further faulted the whole process of the election, and called for a fresh poll, said aspirants were issued a ‘doctored delegate lists’ midnight to the main primary election. 

“Midnight to the election we (aspirants) were handed over another delegates list completely different from that we know and we went through it but discovered to our dismay that the list has been totally altered.

“Three Hundred and Eighty Three names have been imported into it (delegates list) which had totally altered the configuration and before then we have all been talking to delegates- meeting them in their different locations.”

Mr. Oke, who was a former National Legal Adviser to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), also alleged that there were influx of non-party members and fake delegates who were handed over ‘neck tags’ as a prerequisite to enter the venue of the voting exercise.  

The governorship aspirant stated that what was televised lived to the people was a mere “cinema and film” that couldn’t display the level of corruption orchestrated behind the voting point of the poll.

“The corruption didn’t happen on the television but at the point of accreditation, the point of delegate lists and issuance of tags to unauthorized persons”.

He added that it would have been different if the accreditation process was shown live and the delegates’ list was demonstrated or pasted a day before the election.

“In my premises on the morning of the primary election, One Hundred and Fifteen (115) delegates have been disenfranchised.

“All I could do was to write a letter to the Chairman of the Primary Election Committee but that time he had already visited the Ondo state government house in Akure”, Mr. Oke said.

The APC Chieftain noted that the Appeal Committee is bound by its ethics and regulations to resolve all issues arising from the primary election.

“The party is entitled to cover up corruption and am also entitled to react to covering of corruption…I am a due process man let me give them (Appeal Committee) a chance to come out with their verdict on this proven corruption”, Oke said.

He, however, stated that the outcome of the committee would also determine his next line of action following speculations that he is prepared to jump the ship to another political party in the state to seek for his ambition.

“We are looking up till Saturday, Sunday and not beyond Monday for them to have come out of time because they are already out of time to make a position known.

“When I know the position, I will give appropriate reaction and action to it. But for now it would be in the realm of conjunction to say that there would lawless or to say I would react this way if there is lawless but I assumed suavity in the favor of the authority”, Mr. Oke said.

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