The opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC) has rejected the results of Saturday’s governorship election held in Ekiti State and won by incumbent Governor Biodun Oyebanji.
Even as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) declared that it is still studying the results, and would react at the appropriate time.
Governorship candidate of the ADC, Dare Bejide, during a chat with journalists on Sunday, said, “My immediate reaction is to reject the result of the election in its entirety, because, in my view, the exercise conducted on Saturday was not credible.”
The ADC candidate, who alleged that the atmosphere was like a war zone in his polling unit, said, “Vote-buying was carried out openly. Bags of money were brought to polling units, and from what we gathered, enormous sums were spent.
“As for our next line of action, I have not personally seen the full results yet; I have only heard reports from social media. We are currently collating the results from units and wards. We will brief our party members and decide on the appropriate course of action.”
The Ekiti State Chairman of the PDP, Tunji Odeyemi, in his part, said the party was still studying reports on the election for it to determine the next course of action, and that the party would come out with its position on the election in due course.
Odeyemi, a former acting governor, said, “We are studying the situation. Studying in the sense that when an election is conducted like this, reports will come from various units and wards.
“We are compiling the results, which we will study and come out with our position as a party. That is exactly what we are doing now.
“The election is a process. There are many things that we will put together that will make a process. The result and the product of that process is what we are studying. The position of the party will depend on what we arrive at after studying the reports.
“We sent out our people to the field – party agents and leaders across the state, and they have started bringing their reports. We will study them and come out with a position,” Odeyemi said.
The national secretariat of the party, however, expressed disappointment over the outcome of the election, describing the result as not good enough for the party.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mohammed Jungudo, told reporters that the outcome fell short of the party’s expectations.
Reacting to the outcome, the PDP spokesman said the party did not anticipate such a result, noting that it would determine its next course of action after conducting a thorough review of the entire electoral process.
He stated, “The result as announced by INEC is something not good to hear for the party, but we will have to wait until we get a proper report from our monitoring team, as well as the Ekiti State chapter of the party, before we can actually take a proper position.
“Until we get a proper report from the monitoring team and the Ekiti State PDP chapter, a formal position cannot be taken. It’s a sad result. This is not something we were actually expecting.”
(Ripples)