Following the reactions that trail the APC primary in Ondo State, the campaign spokesman of one of the aspirants, Senator Jimoh Ibrahim, Hon. Banjo Okunomo speaks with Hakeem Gbadamosi on the court action Instituted by his principal, among other issues.
Your principal is in court to challenge the results of the Ondo APC governorship primary, do you think this is the right step to settle the differences?
When you’re in court to challenge an action, there is the legal position that he who alleges must prove. You put up your case before the judge; it is for other party to put up a defence and matter becomes pending in court till judgement is given on the matter. As law abiding citizens who understand the law, we are not going to make any further comment on a matter which is already before the court. We have put up our evidence and this is before the court, but we cannot continue to tell you at this stage that these are our evidences. So, the matter is already before the court and I will not want to talk much about it.
Have you explore all necessary party internal mechanisms to resolve the issue before heading to the court?
[Senator] Jimoh Ibrahim is a lawyer; he understands law and he is one of the best lawyers around, because he knows how to apply the law. He understands the law that says all internal mechanisms must be explored before heading to court or resorting to legal action and he complied with that before heading to court.
Two of his prayers are a request for another election and that APC should not be in the ballot for the November 16 governorship election. Will this not affect the fortune of the party in the state?
I want to tell you that whatever the decision of the court is will be the position of everybody. You are aware that there are two prayers that a fresh election should be conducted and that the party should be delisted from the ballot. Since we are in court, we should prepare for any of the consequences unless the parties agreed to settle out of court because we still remain members of one political party, APC.
So out of court settlement should not be ruled out?
Nothing is impossible in politics. If the players before the court decide to settle out of court, it will hasten the judgement which will amount to consent judgement. The court speedily gives the verdict following the agreement by the parties involved. So we cannot rule it out.
But if the court orders a fresh election, do you see your principal, Jimoh Ibrahim, winning the primary?
You will agree with me that a particular aspirant who suspected he would lose the election was the one who opted for this questionable election. So if my principal was not going to win the election, why did they not allow the election to take place? It is because they dreaded him and know that he’s going to win the election anytime, any day. So those who ensure that the election did not take place and concocted figures are the ones afraid that if there is an election they will lose. So [Senator] Ibrahim believes in his capacity that he is going to win the election and wouldn’t have said that they should conduct the election again. I can assure you that if the court orders a fresh election, he will surely win.
Out of the 15 aggrieved aspirants, he remains the only one challenging the conduct of the primary in court. Why?
This is because he is the only aspirant who has the strength and this is what some people saw in him that made the people to support him. He is worth more than other aspirants, even the governor. This is because Jimoh Ibrahim is the only one who visited all the 203 wards. So he is in the best position to fight this cause, because he works more than any of the aspirants but that victory has been given to another person, stolen away through the back door because the result was concocted and election never held in the state.
But other aggrieved aspirants seemed to have bowed to party supremacy…
I don’t think they bowed to the party supremacy, but because they had done it to the level of their capacity. If they have more capacity they would have done more than what they did to the appeal level; they would have continued. As I speak, I know a good number of them who surreptitiously visit my principal to give him support in fighting this cause.
But many politicians have expressed no surprise over the case instituted by your principal, that similar action was taken by him against the PDP in 2015.
Is it because he is fighting injustice now that they are saying this? Somebody is fighting injustice, recklessness, impunity. Is it because he is fighting injustice that he is tagged? What the people of the country are fighting against now is injustice. I challenge anyone to come out and provide evidence that APC primary elections took place in the state. Is that the way elections were done? For instance, when the PDP conducted their primary, it was open, free, fair, but in APC we did not know where the voting took place. Who were the electoral officers? They are invisible and we didn’t see them throughout. In all the 18 local government areas, where did voting take place? I am saying it categorically that the governor did not vote, none of the aspirants voted. I have video evidence that the governor did not vote. When they knew they were going to use this approach, why did they take N50 million for the nomination fee? Why did they ask the aspirants to pay for the revalidation of the APC voter’s register? I am aware that Jimoh Ibrahim paid N100 million to the coffers of the party. When they knew they are going to impose a candidate and election would not hold, did they tell anyone? Or if there is going to be consensus, are they not suppose to come up with that earlier enough, rather than say people should subject themselves to an election that would not take place? On the day of election, we could not find anybody to conduct the election. No election; no electoral officers; no electoral materials; no ballot; no casting; no collation centre; nothing! And they were claiming there was election, where?
This is breach of electoral guidelines and breach of the Electoral Act. I wonder why they are changing the goal post in the middle of the game. They are to give every aspirant ample opportunity, especially when the Supreme Court had said no political party should engage in recklessness by not allowing internal democracy. So what we are talking here is internal democracy. If we must thrive as a ruling party, so that we don’t just fizzle out after this tenure, we must do right thing by embracing and practising internal democracy. So what happened in Ondo State on the 20th day of April is a complete rape of democracy, mega fraud which must be corrected and if not corrected I see us sitting on the keg of gun powder.
Can you confirm the intervention of the party’s leadership and the presidency?
The party has hierarchy, apart from the electoral committee set up to conduct the election which did not do well. There were complaints forwarded to the appeal committee by the aspirants who said there was no election and their claims were dismissed on the grounds that they were baseless. The national leadership toed the same path with the panel and that shows that one way or the other they have been compromised. But after exhausting all internal mechanisms of the party, the last thing to do is to seek redress in court and that is exactly what is happening now. I am not, however, in any position to know if the presidency is in talks with my principal; I am not aware of that. The only thing I am aware of is that the matter is in court and now that we are before the court, it is left for the parties involved to say we will pursue it to the end or let us settle amicably as members of the same family. It is possible that they can still resolve the issues while in court.
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