Kayode Ojo participated in the recent All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship primary in Ekiti State. In this interview RAYMOND MORDI in Lagos, Ojo, an engineer, explains why the shadow poll will not stand and how it will affect the fortunes of the ruling party during the June election
What is your assessment of the Ekiti APC governorship primary that was said to have produced Biodun Oyebanji, former SSG as the party’s flag bearer?
The truth of the whole thing is that Biodun Oyebanji, popularly called BAO never won the primary. During the primary, the people came out to vote for me, but the result that was declared on that day is a conjecture; the result was written at a dinner table and it was not the will of the people of Ekiti. As of today, I can tell you that the APC still does not have a legitimate candidate in the election scheduled to take place in June.
But, INEC has listed Oyebanji as the APC flag bearer…
That is based on the report submitted at the APC secretariat in Abuja by those that supervised the theft called governorship primary. It might interest you to know that we have filed an appeal at the APC secretariat in Abuja. The appeal was submitted two days after the result of the purported primary was declared. But, up till this day, the party has not contacted us to indicate that it has done any analysis of what transpired that day as a result of our appeal. The appeal is still pending and even though Oyebanji’s name has been published by INEC as the APC flag bearer in Ekiti, he is not our candidate in the election.
What happened on the day of the primary that nullified the declaration of Oyebanji as the party’s flag bearer?
There was a little hitch on the night before the primary. The list of the people that were going to conduct the election at the various wards and local governments was hidden from us; I would say the six other aspirants because the seventh aspirant is a mole. He is not a serious aspirant because his form was procured by the state government. His name is Bamidele Faparusi. We were worried that we did not know who and who was going to conduct the primary at the wards and local governments on the eve of the election. When we finally saw the list at 6 pm, we saw that they were members of the campaign committee of Biodun Oyebanjo who was eventually declared the winner of the contest and we said, this doesn’t make any sense. Can the APC chairman be the Returning Officer of a governorship election in which many parties are participating? We said it is not possible and that we cannot allow it to happen. Our people are not represented in the group. So, either they disband that list or allow us to bring in our people to kind of dilute the list. Thus, even if his people are on the list, at least we will have at least one person from each of the aspirants to neutralize his influence on the group, to ensure that whatever vote that is counted at the polling units is what would be recorded, because since we are doing the voice counting and line counting; it is not a ballot paper that you can access after the election. So, we went back and forth and they said we should send 20 names. Later we realized that 20 names would not be enough and we requested 50 each. The secretary finally got back to us and told us to send 25 names each and we responded promptly by sending the names. But, as at the time we are having this interview, the list was never upgraded and they never contacted us to say, the people you sent, Mr A will go to Ward 1 and that Mr B will go to Ward 3; nothing like that. So, we were complaining that night and we actually wrote a letter which was engineered by the mole I spoke of, Faparusi. We didn’t know he was playing a script he was sent to come and execute. But, we got through to the secretary of the committee and requested a meeting with the chairman, so we can resolve this grey area since the election was supposed to start at 8 am the following day. He responded by saying that the man was busy. But, between 10 pm and midnight, we heard that they started giving out electoral materials to these campaign members of Mr Oyebanji, which we had complained about. Rather than dilute the list as we suggested, they were going ahead with their by handing over the materials to them. We insisted on having a meeting with the man, Governor Badaru, but he said he cannot meet us that night and that we should meet by 9 am the following day at the party secretariat, to which we all agreed, believing that we are going to have a meeting to sort out the whole thing. In fact, Hon. Femi Bamisile had to travel all the way from Omuo very early in the morning to come to Ado, the state capital. I left Ikoro to come to Ado so that we can quickly have a meeting and we go back to our various places for the primary. By 9.30 am, when we didn’t see the man, we started calling the secretary and the chairman, Governor Badaru but nobody was answering. But, later the secretary called us around 10 am, to say that the chairman said because we’ve been protesting he is no longer interested in the meeting. Again, we said, if you are afraid of coming to the party secretariat, we can meet with you at the Government House – we know that you were accommodated at the Government House, which in reality is not supposed to be so. In other primaries, when the chairmen of the electoral committees come, they stay in a hotel, so that they can be accessible to all the aspirants. But, he was more or less should we call it kidnapped and restricted to the Government House, he and the other members of the committee; they were not accessible. He said he wasn’t going to do that, so we now said, if that is the case we had to return to our abodes and organize our people for the election. I remember vividly that we were interviewed by reporters at the time. The first question was whether we were going to boycott the primary. The answer was that we were not going to boycott the election; that all we were trying to do was to meet with the chairman and sort out the grey area, which is the issue of Returning Officers and thereafter everybody can go back home to make sure the election was done the way we want it to be done. So, basically, that was what happened. But, later we found out that they had even written the result the night before the election. That was why meeting us was of no consequence to the committee. But, despite all the distractions, my people came out to vote for me. Some of them were harassed, beaten blue-black, to be able to conform to their evil machinations. But, at the end of the day, they still summoned the courage to vote for me. In most areas, they didn’t even do accreditation and in some areas, they did accreditation but didn’t even count. In some areas, the moment they see all our people doing accreditation, they will go in front and put the flag of BAO and most times the people at the back don’t know what is happening in front. In some other areas, at 10 am, they said they have finished voting when the guidelines stipulate that accreditation must start at 8 am and end at 12noon, and voting should start at 12noon and end at 2pm. In most places, including Ado-Ekiti, when you get there at 10am, they will tell you that they have finished voting. How can we continue to behave like this? Even in the animal kingdom, things are done better.
What will it take to address this perceived injustice?
Like I said earlier, we have filed an appeal and we are still waiting for the result to be communicated to us. But, because we knew that we had only 14 days to file a case at the court, while waiting for the result of the appeal, we have gone ahead to file a case at the Federal High Court to seek redress and to reclaim the mandate because I know that I won that election.
Will the party leadership not say that you are taking them to court?
If the party were bold enough to collect N22.5 million from me and from all the other serious aspirants, the party by law and by right is obligated to ensure that the process that would lead to that election must be fair to all of us. So, if there is an infraction, knowingly or unknowingly, then we reserve the right as free citizens of this country to seek redress in the appropriate manner. That day, when they were announcing the fake result, our supporters wanted to go and storm the place but we told them we are violent people and that there are peaceful avenues to seek redress and that is what we have followed by heading to the court.
The party has been talking about reconciliation, so maybe at the end of the day that they will settle everything…
You can only talk about reconciliation when you make an inadvertent error, but in a situation where it is a pre-meditated fraud, wicked machinations of human beings, what are you going to reconcile? We paid N22.5 million for forms, we campaigned around all the local governments, distributed resources, wasted time and energy, including abandoning our families for some time, then a day before the election, the result is engineered on a dinner table. What are you going to reconcile? The only reconciliation is to call for another primary, which would be free and fair or to hand the ticket to the actual winner, which is me.
What could have been delaying the outcome of the appeal to the party?
It is as a result of what the party is going through now; it does not have a substantive National Working Committee (NWC). If the party had a proper NWC, not a caretaker committee, I am sure probably things would have been done better. I also think that the caretaker committee is a part of this fraud; they sold us out for the fraud to be perpetrated. So, it is a conspiracy and members of the caretaker committee are a part of the conspiracy.
Has Oyebanji reached out to you?
No, he cannot reach out to me because he knows that what they have done is a brazen theft, which will not stand. So, on what basis is going to reach out to me; to tell me, sorry? Or that I didn’t do enough or that I didn’t win? It is only when you have a basis or to use the legal terminology, a locus standi, he can be free to reach out. I have some of the videos where he said to the people during his thank-you tour that he got the ticket on a platter of gold. What does that mean? He knows he did not win the primary and that they6 did some ‘wuru-wuru’ and put his name. It is the law court that would resolve who is the candidate of the APC in the June governorship election in Ekiti.
Do you think you will get justice at the court?
I have high hopes in the courts because I know that the courts are not populated by members of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. So, they are competent jurists of competent jurisdiction. I have so much respect and believe in the Nigerian judicial system, so I have high hopes that justice will be served.
What is likely to be the implication of this scenario on the governorship election?
It will be a catastrophe or a disaster waiting for the APC unless it is mitigated. When they were doing all these, all their focus was on how to weaken the PDP. But, now in Ekiti, there is a third force, Segun Oni’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), where many people from PDP and APC are migrating to. Unless they restore the mandate to the actual winner, which is me, they are likely to lose the election. Ekiti people are tired of the fraudulent arrangement; they want a decent primary, to choose who will lead them; they are educated, they are free-borns, they are slaves. That is the only basis they can get good governance. As of today in Ekiti State, there is no household that you will visit that you will see pipe-borne water from the government. Go to our hospitals, things are horrible.
When the National Assembly made the Direct Primary the only way of choosing candidates during the course of amending the Electoral Act, Nigerians celebrated. So, even the Direct Primary is not fully-proof?
The Direct Primary that the National Assembly tried to enact is quite different from the one that was employed in Ekiti recently. The one the National Assembly had in mind would be subject to the supervision of INEC. This means that all the processes, from how you choose who is going to conduct the election or the delegates’ list would be closely supervised by INEC. That one is different from this one where the party is free to do whatever it wants to do. Somebody might seat at the airport, write a result and declare a winner. We saw what happened in Anambra, where the party got almost 300,000 during the primary and could barely muscle 50,000 votes during the general election.
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