By The Lagos State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party, on Sunday, engaged each other in war of words over the results of Saturday’s Lagos East senatorial and Kosofe Constituency II bye-elections.
The PDP, in a statement by its Chairman, Engr Adedeji Doherty, described the elections as a charade, accusing the Independent National Electoral Commission of collaborating with the APC to manipulate the results in their favour.
This, according to Doherty, was an attempt at image laundering by the APC, which was “done to give impression that the APC and their leader are still in firm control of Lagos, which is obviously far from the truth and does not represent the true position of Lagosians.”
The PDP chair also accused the APC of massive vote buying with state funds, saying, “To the APC in Lagos, this devilish and draconian trend of cash for votes is worthy of celebration as evidence of control of the electorate, but we assure that this will end very soon.”
Doherty said the PDP “would be more than ready before the 2023 general elections” while urging Lagosians to “please keep their hope alive.”
In response to the PDP’s claims, the All Progressives Congress said the opposition party chairman’s reaction to the election results serves as a “comic relief from the recent pressure and challenges.”
This was contained in a statement by Lagos State APC Spokesman, Seye Oladejo, who said the PDP is a spineless and ineffectual opposition in the State. According to the APC, the results of the bye-elections reflected the popular will, saying the election will go down in history as one of the best conducted by INEC.
Oladejo said the APC was surprised that the Lagos PDP Chairman “could complain about the results of the elections that he was too busy to campaign for his candidates.”
“While they were busy conducting fake personal opinion polls, the ruling APC was reaching out to the voters with life changing programs, manifestos and policies that are relevant to the challenges of the day,” the APC spokesman added.
Recall INEC had declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Tokunbo Abiru as the winner of the Lagos East senatorial bye-election after polling 89,204 votes. His closest rival, Babatunde Gbadamosi of the Peoples Democratic Party scored 11,251 votes.
