The candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the recent rerun election in the Offa Local Government Area of Kwara State, Mr. Saheed Popoola, in this interview with SUCCESS NWOGU, alleges that the PDP attempted to woo him, among other issues What’s the genesis of your protracted disagreement with the PDP? My disagreement with them started when I was the Offa Local Government Council Chairman because I refused to compromise. Whenever revenue allocations were released from Abuja. I used to go to a radio station every month to inform my people about the amount released and the actual amount released to me by the state. I would let them know what the balance was after the payment of salaries and what we were going to use it to do in the LG. Are you saying the amount allocated to Offa LG from Abuja was not usually the actual figure released to you by the state? They will not even give us two-third of it. What was their explanation for the shortfall? They would not give any serious explanation. What I used to do was to tell my people what I received. That was where my problem started with them. They were bent on having me defect to the PDP, threatening that if I did not, they would remove me. Tell us more about the overtures made to you by PDP to defect to the party? They offered me N100m and the chairmanship ticket of their party but I refused. They called me privately and publicly but I refused. I was offered a lot of things. I am in politics to deliver services to my community and to upgrade their living standard and not merely because of the money I can amass. I know that money is not everything in life, it can finish in a day. If you have problems with the government, it will be solved one day, but if you have problems with the community, you may not easily get out of it. So, what is APC’s perception of the rerun election? The election, from accreditation to the collation of results at ward level, except at the LG level, was free and fair. So, how come that they came up with other figures different from the results at the collation centres? Even if we voted for more than ten hours, I do not think that we could get up to 56,000 votes that they gave as the total number of votes for both PDP and APC. At what point did you observe what you termed as irregularities or election fraud? I must thank the security agencies. Initially, there was scarcity of ballot papers but the security agencies ensured that ballot papers were enough in each of the polling centres. After accreditation, we went into voting around noon. They started counting around 4pm. All these processes were very peaceful. At the collation centres in each ward, it was also very peaceful; where the returning officers of each ward declared the results for the councillors. They declared our candidates winners in 11 wards and the PDP in one ward. Later, we went to the LG collation centre, which was at the LG secretariat. It was when we reached there that we suspected some foul play. We could not find the returning officer there, but we were able to collate all the results at the LG collation centres. APC got 11,337 votes in the chairmanship while PDP polled 4,710 votes. When we could not find anybody to announce the result, the assistant commissioner of police that led the team that supervised the election instructed that all of us should go to the office of the Kwara State Independent Electoral Commission at Ilorin so that they would announce the result, since they could not see the returning officer. What happened to the returning officer? He absconded. We later asked the Chairman of KWASIEC, Dr. Uthman Ajidagba, about it. He told us that there was no problem, that he would let us know the returning officer at the appropriate time. It was the next morning on Radio Kwara that they announced another result. Where was the right place to announce the LG Chairmanship election result? The KWASIEC guideline is clear about the announcement of election results. That of councillors will be made at the ward collation centres. That should be made by the returning officers of those wards. They declared 11 councillors for us and one councillor for the PDP. The guideline also states that the LG collation centre will be the point where the LG returning officer will announce the winner of the chairmanship election. So, it was expected that they should have announced it at the Offa LG secretariat, which was the collation centre. Where was the announcement made? Early in the morning on Sunday, I just woke up around 6am and I received calls from people who told me that they had announced a different candidate, PDP’s Segun Olanipekun, in the early morning news of Radio Kwara as the winner. I later heard the announcement. It read, ‘Special announcement: The election that was held yesterday in Offa, PDP is the winner of all the seats.’ They said the chairmanship candidate of the PDP won with 35,937; that the APC had 20,161, making about 56,098 votes that were cast. They could not even mention figures for the councillors because they had not concocted them as of that time. They just said on the radio that PDP had cleared all the wards. I think Ajidagba was very reluctant in the first place because they did not mention his name in the first morning announcement. It was later that we started hearing that it was televised on NTA Ilorin, where he announced the purported result figures for chairmanship and councillorship election results. That was what we later heard, I did not see him announcing the so-called results. What made you believe the result announced was compromised? It is very simple. What was accredited that day was not up to 17,000. The ballot papers that were brought to Offa KWASIEC that day, I was made to understand, were not up to 20,000. So, where could they have gotten 56,000 votes that they announced? We have our results. We still expect KWASIEC to come out and announce the authentic result and tell the people to forget whatever they might have heard in the past. A PDP councillorship candidate, Mr. Afolabi Jimoh, rejected his victory. How would you react to that? We are all from Offa. The antecedent of an Offa person is all about equity and justice. Afolabi is a typical Offa man. An average Offa man believes in equity and justice. Afolabi believes that as a Muslim, he will not take what does not belong to him because there is reward either positively or negatively from Allah. That is his belief. He was the PDP candidate in 2011 and also the candidate in the present rerun election. He went to court against our candidate and a rerun election was ordered. How can anybody say he was not the one, that he had been changed? The electoral act is very clear: It is either the candidate is dead or he resigned. Legally, it was a rerun election and it was compulsory that all those that participated in the last election must be the candidates in the present one. When he later lost in this rerun, initially he wanted to go with them but his conscience was pricking him and he could not even sleep. So, when we were about to have our press conference, we just saw him walk in and said he wanted to have his voice heard and we allowed him. But there is an insinuation that the APC had promised him juicy offers that superseded the benefits of a councillor for him to make such a rejection? It is not true. Remember if he had become a councillor, that would have added to his curriculum vitae and that would be a political plus for him. APC did not bribe him. Do not forget that money is not everything. After your protests, what next? We have approached the court. Also, we have a pending case at the Appeal Court. We are also going to the election tribunal. We are already filing our papers. Do you have confidence in the tribunal to deliver justice? It is left to the tribunal to prove itself better now. The last election we had was free and fair. We believe in what we have. We will carry the media along so that Nigerians will be aware of the proceedings. What is your advice to your supporters? They should be patient. One day, God almighty will come to our rescue. They should not take laws into their hands. We do not want a lawless society. They should be peaceful, by God’s grace, our mandate will be restored.
Posted on: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 08:54:27 +0000