Member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Ayo Arise and the Peoples Democratic Party’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan speak on the conduct of the just concluded Ekiti State governorship election in Abuja on Tuesday.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have traded blames on the conduct of the just concluded Ekiti State governorship elections with the alleged buying of votes.
PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, said his party has rejected in its entirety the results because it was allegedly marred by fraudulent practices.
“The governors of other states, particularly the neighbouring states came to Ado-Ekiti and came to Ekiti State generally and got agents to be doing buying and selling of votes,” he alleged. “That is totally condemnable.”
According to Ologbondiyan, his party was robbed of its mandate in last Saturday’s election which saw the emergence of APC’s candidate, Mr Kayode Fayemi, the Governor-Elect.
He added, “What happened in Ekiti was an open-day robbery. And that is why our party has in its entirety rejected the process and outcome,” he said on Tuesday. “What happened was a complete fraud.”
But reacting, APC member, Senator Ayo Arise, dismissed the allegation of votes buying stressing that his party did not engage in “blatant vote buying like setting up Kiosk.”
Arise rather accused the opposition PDP of enticing Ekiti electorates with cash to vote even two days before the election.
“The PDP started buying votes two days before the election, they were sending money. They sent money to all the voters,” he said.
“They came to tell us that these people (PDP agents) have bought all the votes already. We now said, if PDP is buying votes, and these people, the issue is that they will now be asking you for money.”
Arise however advocated that the issue of vote buying should be well addressed in future elections in the country.
He added, “As far as I am concerned, what happened in Ekiti is one of the challenges that we as Nigerians must find a solution for because somebody started buying votes and you don not expect me to sit back.”
On the issue of card readers, PDP’s spokesman accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of plotting to rig the election in favour of APC’s candidate, Mr Kayode Fayemi, through the enhancement of card readers.
He added, “The information available to the Peoples Democratic Party upon which we made that demand was that INEC was already plotting a rigging scheme for the APC.
“They made the enhanced card readers available in their own stronghold and brought the unenhanced cared readers to the stronghold of the PDP and we raised questions, they never responded to us.”