National Chairman of the All Progressives' Congress (APC),
Adams Oshiomhole, has disclosed that it would have been impossible for Ekiti
governor-elect, Dr Kayode Fayemi, to have engaged in vote-buying to win the
Ekiti gubernatorial election.
Fayemi defeated the PDP candidate, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, aka
Eleka, in the state's July 14 election as he won 197,459 votes to his
opponent's 178,121 votes.
However, many observers and the opposition, led by Ekiti
governor, Ayodele Fayose, have accused Fayemi and the ruling APC of engaging in
violence and illegal vote-buying with money paid to voters on the day of
election.
While appearing during an interview on Channels Television,
Oshiomhole said Fayemi could not possibly have been able to engage in vote-buying
due to his meager means. He said, "I was not in Ekiti so I can't claim to
be a witness to vote-buying and I did not participate in any decision to buy
votes in Ekiti, and I have my doubts as to if votes were to be bought and sold.
"No one can claim that Fayemi is a rich man. I know that he was struggling
to find money to mobilise and sustain his campaign that he could have had such
huge tons of money."
He further alleged that the only person capable of engaging
in vote-buying during the election is Fayose. He said, "I guess it's the
guy who had access to Ekiti treasury, which in this case was the PDP and then
the sitting governor (Fayose), who was so confident that he has all the
resources.
"He even described himself as a rock - if you fall on
him you will break, if he falls on you he will crush you. Now, the definition
and the particulars of this rock may well be in terms of the amount of naira that
he thought was available." Despite his conviction that Fayemi or the APC
have no financial muscle to engage in vote-buying in Ekiti, Oshiomhole said he
could not dismiss the allegation.
"I'm not going to dismiss the allegations either way,
just to say that I was not a party to it and I couldn't have possibly supported
it," he said. APC chieftain admits to vote-buying
Despite Oshiomhole's denial of the party's culpability in
buying votes during July's election, an APC chieftain in Ekiti State, Senator
Ayo Arise, confessed that the party bought votes. During an interview days
after the election, Arise said the APC had to start buying votes when it saw
that the PDP was deploying the same trick. He said, "The PDP started
buying votes two days before the election. They were spending money…every voter
in Ekiti, you know this photocopying of voters cards that we all cried out
about. Now, he (Fayose) sent money to all the voters and they came to tell us
that these people, they have bought all the votes already.
"Now we said, what are we going to do? If PDP is buying
votes, and these people, the issue is, they will now keep asking you for money.
"As far as I am concerned, what happened in Ekiti is one of the challenges
we as Nigerians must find a solution to because somebody started buying votes,
you do not expect me to sit back. "If I know that this guy has rigged me
out of this election, so I should now say that those people requesting, 'O
somebody has paid me N4,000,' I'll now say 'O sorry, I don't have money'? And
so please go and vote for him?
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