•You’re recruiting underage voters, party replies
The Ekiti State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) plan to stop the collation of results of the poll midway to allow for the tampering and manipulation of the entire process.
The state publicity secretary, Jackson Adebayo, said both INEC and the APC allegedly named the plan ‘Edo State Code’ and warned the electoral commission not to bow to pressure from the APC to subvert the will of the people of the state.
“After it has become clear to Kayode Fayemi and his co-travellers that the people of the state have already rejected them, they are daily weaving plots upon plots that will never take them anywhere. Apart from their plan to use brute force, they are also planning to use some devilish models that they employed in some recent elections.
“ First, they are touting what they call ‘see and buy approach’ which they used in Ondo State where they dangled money at voters in the glare of compromised security agents to make people vote for them. Having realised that Ekiti people are principled and won’t be easily bought, they are now resorting to the Edo State Code. Recall that in the Edo State governorship election, having seen that the people had rejected them and their candidate, they colluded with INEC officials to stop the collations of results midway. That gave them and the then governor, Adams Oshiomhole, the opportunity to go round at night to tamper with the results from Edo South Senatorial District where the PDP candidate hails from. We are sounding a note of warning that the people of the state and our party will never allow for such criminal act to take place here in Ekiti State.
“Once voting and counting at polling units have been concluded, the results should be taken to collation centers and duly announced. There should never be a break in the process. We are also using this opportunity to call on lovers of democracy around the world, and the international community, to show special interest in the Ekiti State governorship election,” he said.
Reacting to the allegations, the APC state publicity secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun, denied the allegations, saying that Governor Ayo Fayose and the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prof. Kolapo Eleka, are allegedly involved in illegality by canvassing for votes in public schools, saying that visiting schools during school hours to campaign is an “act of desperation taken too far.”
The party said the visit to schools has confirmed the earlier allegation it raised that underage school children are being allegedly coerced into electoral illegality and that that teachers’ voter cards are being collected for a fee after which they are photocopied and taken to the governor.
Olatunbosun said: “It is regrettable that Fayose and his deputy have constituted themselves to a nuisance in our secondary schools across the state by turning the institutions to campaign grounds to disrupt academic activities. It is politics taken too far for Fayose and the PDP candidate to go about during schools hours to disrupt academic activities of the underage children in secondary schools.”