A group working for the realization of the governorship ambition of Sen. Olufemi Lanlehin of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Oyo First, has alleged that Governor Abiola Ajimobi deployed over a billion naira to prosecute the botched presidential and national assembly elections earlier fixed for yesterday.
The group was reacting to a statement credited to the All Progressives Congress, APC, that the opposition, including ADC, planned to induce voters with money before the election was postponed.
Saying that no amount of vote-buying methods can save Ajimobi and other APC candidates from defeat, the group, in a statement by its coordinator, Jenriyin Shuaib, alleged that “Ajimobi distributed N700, 000 to each of the close to 6000 polling units scattered across the 351 wards in the state on the eve of the botched election.”
“We have it on good authority that Governor Abiola Ajimobi, after close to four opinion polls suggested failure for the party, deployed over a billion naira. This was after his efforts to get some unscrupulous elements within the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, do his bidding failed to materialize.
“For us, it is shameful that a man who has governed Oyo State for close to 8 years would now resort to vote-buying tactics to win election in just 9 local government areas of Oyo South senatorial district.
“The Governor had budgeted N500,000 and N200,000 for voters and thugs respectively in each polling unit. Around 10 pm, each of the council chairmen went home with N21,000,000. When he heard that the election has been postponed, the governor has started asking the council bosses to return the fund, for keep, till Friday when it will be redistributed.
“Only few 48 hours to the botched election, Ajimobi and his wife who is obsessed with power, organized an empowerment programme to buy the people they have neglected for two terms to their side. Items that were bought with public funds were distributed to prosecute individual ambition. While we would not blame the people for accepting the goodies because they belong to them, we would like to advise them to be resolute in their bid to send Ajimobi and his ills away. They should vote for people who would be accessible to them and not people like Ajimobi who is billed to retire to a 5-acre gated estate at Agodi.”
While admonishing voters not to be discouraged by the postponement, the group urged them to send what it called ‘dem dem’ administration that has impoverished them and send their children out of schools, out of circulation by electing candidates of the ADC.
