Don’t issue certificate of return to Abiodun, LP tells INEC

The Labour Party in Ogun State has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to issue a certificate of return to Governor Dapo Abiodun, who was declared the winner of last Saturday’s governorship election. The party described the election where Abiodun was elected for a second term in office as the climax of a lingering compromise of electoral integrity in the state capable of creating a political monopoly and threatening sustainable democracy.

Chairman of Labour Party Caretaker Committee in the state, Engr Lookman Abiodun Jagun, in a statement released in Abeokuta on Friday after its executive meeting, revealed that the election was characterised by evidential cases of disruption of voting, ballot box snatching, burning of ballot papers in opposition strongholds by thugs allegedly loyal to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Jagun also noted that the election was also characterised by the manipulation of the voting and collation process as well as the premature declaration that is clearly against the prescribed electoral rules. 

According to the statement, Labour Party, which partnered with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the gubernatorial election, noted the election should have been declared inconclusive and a rerun conducted in areas where voting was disrupted.

Similarly, the gubernatorial candidate of the Labour Party, Comrade Kehinde Sogunle, said that despite the anomalies that characterised the election, the APC candidate could only defeat the PDP candidate with less than 14,000 votes. In comparison, the cancelled votes in the election were 33,000 votes.

Sogunle called on INEC “to heed the call of the good people of Ogun state and reverse its pronouncement of Dapo Abiodun as the winner of the election and conduct a rerun election, in accordance with the dictates of the law, in all the polling units where voters where disenfranchised.”

“That is the only way that the outcome of the election will be a true reflection of the wishes of the generality of the electorates in Ogun State. Awarding Dapo Abiodun a certificate of return with the glaring fraud that characterised the election will amount to a rape of democracy,” Sogunle was quoted in the statement.

Labour Party also accused the Abiodun administration of “planting of moles in other parties, like the Labour Party, and sponsoring, coopting and aiding supposed officers of other political parties to destabilize their parties from within” in a bid to “establishing a political monopoly in the state.”

The party further reiterated that its erstwhile National Publicity Secretary and Ogun State chairman, Abayomi Arabambi and Michael Ashade respectively remain suspended from the party.