Former Deputy National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, said people of Lagos should expect their votes to count in the 2023 General Election, maintaining that the party had always been rigged out in past elections through various forms of manipulation, but would be difficult doing that anymore.
Chief George gave this assurance in an interview he granted with Tribune Online, saying this would be made possible with the approval granted by President Muhammadu Buhari for electronic transfer of poll results, come 2O23 poll.
Lagos State chapter of PDP has been playing an opposition role since 1999 when Nigeria returned to this current democratic dispensation.
According to the PDP chieftain, who is also the Atona Oodua of Yoruba land, the electronic transfer of poll results, which is part of the Amendment to Electoral Act recently signed into law by the president, will substantially remove and reduce the various manipulation to election result as delivered by voters who came out to exercise their franchise.
This was just as George described the current practice of vote casting and collation of results as rotten, archaic, mundane and terrible, recalling sadly how the 2019 elections in Lagos went as people were beaten, and changing of results recorded, adding that PDP won the last poll exercise in Lagos, but was rigged out.
“Now, the system we were running and the electoral process was rotten, archaic, mundane, terrible, I told you, ah! You go and vote, you go with your PVC card, you swap it, it is you, yes.
“They gave you the ballot paper, you picked and you go and vote, and you go back home. This electronic transfer, as you vote, you press the button you want, it shows. The ‘magomago’ would be substantially removed and reduced. No human interferences anymore,” he said.
“When they say they (APC) has always won in the state, which state? You saw what happened in Lagos, how they were beaten people and doing all sorts of things, and changing the results in the last elections, yeah. We won here,” he added.
The PDP chieftain further recalled that he led his party to victory in all the six states in South-West in 2003, but noted that someone, who he refused to mention had come to apologize that he was the one that changed the Lagos result to allow then Alliance for Democracy (AD)- led government continue in office in the state.
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