…..As Arise, Fasuyi, Owolabi trade words over result

24 hours after the All Progressives Congress senatorial primary election in Ekiti State, the aspirants in the North Senatorial District including former senator, Ayodele Arise, the incumbent, Cyril Fasuyi and Dare Owolabi have traded words over the outcome of the poll.

While Senator Arise and Owolabi rejected the result announced by the APC Senatorial Primary Election Committee, alleging manipulation and falsification of figures, Senator Fasuyi dismissed the claims and urged the former lawmaker to accept the outcome in good faith.

The APC committee had declared Fasuyi winner of the primary with 14,179 votes, while Arise polled 4,868 votes. Other aspirants, Dipo Bamisaye and Dare Owolabi, secured 3,694 and 2,836 votes respectively.

Addressing journalists separately on Tuesday, Arise and Owolabi insisted that they won the shadow poll based on results collated from 33 wards where voting exercise was completed.

According to Arise, the results from 33 wards showed that he scored 8,687 votes against Fasuyi’s 7,755 votes before the process was allegedly disrupted in several areas.

According to him, election officials abandoned the exercise in 12 wards when it became obvious he was leading, while officials failed to show up in 10 other wards across the district.

He also alleged that some ward results were altered to favour Senator Fasuyi, citing Iludun I Ward in Ilejemeje Local Government Area where he claimed votes recorded for him were reduced in the final declaration.

“I won the election and I have proof. I was rigged out by the system. The result does not represent the wish of the people. What happened yesterday was fraught with irregularities, fraud, violence and intimidation,” Arise stated.

“Our formal petition to the APC National Working Committee is being filed with documentary evidence, ward-level results, affidavits and records from our monitoring system. I won the election and I have proof. I was rigged out by the system,” he stated.

Also speaking, another aspirant from the Ekiti North, Mr Dare Owolabi has rejected the primary election results, calling for its cancellation.

The aspirant said that the irregularities that characterized the shadow election was planned, while the figures announced does not exist.

Owolabi said that if the original figures from the wards where election took place were announced he would have won the election with 4,341 votes.

“The election is not fair and a lot of irregularities across board different local government different wards, different units.
We know our people, we know what they did we know how people voted for us, we know our people are terrorized and chased out of the venues.”

He however urged his supporters to remain calm adding that the the primary elections have gone and passed. “We will fight the battle on the primary elections soon, but I want attention to be focus on the governorship election that is coming up next month for all parties to join hands and bring back our governor.”

But reacting to the allegations, Senator Fasuyi described the claims as baseless and urged Arise and Owolabi to accept the outcome of the election in the interest of the party.

“I want to appeal to a respected leader of our great party, Senator Arise to accept the outcome of the primary election in good faith and join hands with us to move the party forward,” he said.

The senator, who is also the Director-General of Governor Biodun Oyebanji’s re-election campaign, questioned why anyone would expect him to lose the primary election as the incumbent lawmaker.

“I’m the incumbent senator representing Ekiti North and also the Director-General of Governor Biodun Oyebanji’s re-election campaign. I have remained actively connected to the grassroots and the people know the efforts we have made. So, why would anybody expect me to lose the primary?” he asked.