Senator Smart Adeyemi, an APC candidate for governor in Kogi State’s just concluded governorship primary, has leveled some serious accusations against Governor Yahaya Bello.
He charged Bello with forcing his cousin on the government.
Adeyemi, who appeared on Channels Television’s famous program Politics Today on Monday, swore that no APC primary poll had taken place in the state, in contrast to the purportedly faked results that had been forwarded to the party’s national secretariat.
“The man (Ododo), who is said to have won this election, is Gov. Yahaya Bello’s cousin. There was not a vote. If we permit this to continue, the governor will eventually impose his son on the state. The worst kind of nepotism exists here, he declared.
Adeyemi, who was furious, called the entire procedure a “rape of democracy” on Monday.
Recall that the former Auditor General of Local Governments in Kogi State, Ahmed Ododo, was declared the winner of the governorship primary on Friday by the election committee’s Secretary, Patrick Obahiagbon.
In order to defeat six other competitors, including Adeyemi, who received 311 votes for seventh place, Ododo received 78, 704 votes.
However, the senatorial representative for Kogi West vehemently stated his reservations, claiming that the entire process was a hoax intended to install Bello’s chosen nominee as the state’s next governor.
“Let me start by saying that there was absolutely no election conducted in the entire state,” he remarked. They selected and manipulated the people in their actions. We were all at home waiting when it happened. The INEC and APC officials did not come to my ward. None of the participants cast any votes. The wait was almost six hours. The election was not run. This amounts to a democratic rape. It is an act of treason. No, it is the highest form of manipulation. Both undemocratic and sinful, it is an action.
“As a candidate for the state job, you have coordinators awaiting you all around the state. No one received any materials. They called the party chairman and the heads of the local governments’ departments, and they gave them materials. They filled out the forms using these materials in their familiar environments before returning to the APC election committee. Nowhere held an election. Why do they permit us to purchase forms when they have a system that will prevent people from being nominated for office and from casting ballots? That is not democracy, then. The act is treachery.
“The election in the video you watched was stage-managed, involving some locals and secretariats for local government. It served to give the false impression that the APC primary had taken place.
The Kogi State Commissioner of Information and Communications, Hon. Kingsley Fanwo, responded to the accusation by defending his principal and asserting that the APC governorship race was not rigged.
Fanwo said that all the video footage of the election are sufficient proof that it happened while accusing Adeyemi of stretching the truth.
Additionally, he urged the four candidates who were upset with the APC primary results to familiarize themselves with the party constitution.
“His (Adeyemi’s) comment) is regrettable. Let’s think of this problem as a very large balloon. A single pin can bring down a large balloon of a falsehood. That’s exactly what happened since lying causes some degree of discrepancy in your statements. Adeyemi claimed that there was no election. However, when shown a video of the election, he claimed that the counting was flawed. What he meant by “state-managed elections” is beyond me. The people he saw there (on camera) were APC party members who turned out to cast their ballots.
Meanwhile, the eligibility requirements for voting are fairly explicit in our constitution. Being a member of a party does not automatically make you a full member of that party. If you aren’t accepting any responsibility, you can’t be a real party member.
“Any party you choose to join also entails obligations. You are required to pay your dues, and you receive receipts for doing so. You must meet these requirements in order to use your party member rights. Therefore, in accordance with the party constitution, those who participated in the election and were eligible to vote were the party’s financial members.
“He said that no area of the primary held. It has been demonstrated that none of Adeyemi’s claims are real by providing recordings of the locations where the primary actually took place.
“We are currently looking into it. There are already complaints made to the party about some fictitious membership scripts that were given to individuals who were not even APC members so they could go out and cause problems that day.
“These people should thus review the party’s Constitution and familiarize themselves with its provisions. That will support them in their endeavors moving forward,” he said.
