APC primaries: Anxiety grips Oshodi residents over alleged plan to manipulate results

ANXIETY has continued to grip hundreds of residents of Mafoluku in the Oshodi area of Lagos State over alleged attempts to manipulate the last Thursday House of Representatives primaries of the All Progressives Congress.

Thousands of residents of the community had after the primaries invaded the state party secretariat to protest, what they described as attempts by the electoral officers in the Mafoluku ward to manipulate the primaries in favour of a serving local government chairman, who is aspiring to become the candidate of the party.

It took the intervention of the policemen at Makinde Police Station to pacify angry youths in the Lagos community, who kept vigil in their neighbourhood between Thursday night and early Friday

When Tribune Online visited the community over the weekend peace had returned to the area and the residents were going ahead with the state house of assembly primaries in the presence of a large number of police officers.

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Some of the residents, who spoke with the Tribune Online urged the state leadership of the APC not to upturn the wishes of the residents of the Lagos community.

A resident of the area, who identified himself as Kola Yakubu, who spoke on behalf of the aggrieved residents said that ” we had the House of Representatives primaries here at Mafoluku ward and it was free and fair. ”

He continued that ” there was no single case of violence and at the end of the election, the electoral officers gave the figures in favour of Bashiru Dawodu and everything went well .”

” To our surprise, the electoral officers took the result to the local government, where the chairman is also contesting and attempted to manipulate the results but we mobilized and storm the place to protest “the resident added.

He also stated that ” we were directed to the party secretariat and we registered our protest there and the leadership of the party assured us that our wishes will not be upturned.

Another resident of the area, Fatai Oseni also called on the state leadership of the party not to allow the wishes of the people of Mafoluku to be upturned by some politicians in the area.

Oseni said, ” the last time the people of Mafoluku came out to vote like this was during the 1993 presidential election and because we have been marginalized for a long period, our people came out to vote for one of their own .”

He also stated that ” The people of Mafoluku were very resolute. They know what they wanted and they resisted every attempt to manipulate the results.

A resident, who simply identified herself as Mama T also urged the state leadership of APC to let the wishes of the Mafoluku residents to prevail.