The Labour Party has announced plans to initiate a political shadow team to save democracy in Ondo State......Read The Full Article>>.....Read The Full Article>>
The party has in a press statement on Tuesday signed by Olubori Obafemi, the Media Assistant to the Deputy Governorship Candidate of the party in the just concluded Ondo State governorship election, Dame Olabisi Adu- Okunniyi, condemned what it described as massive vote buying and pockets of ballot boxes snatching during the election.
The party which stated that it has enough evidence to prove irregularities in the last election, stressed that the confession of a woman that the All Progressives Congress (APC) paid her for vote in a trending viral video has exposed underhand electoral offence in the Ondo election.
It maintained that electoral mandate from such induced voting and perverse process cannot be deemed sacred and credible to breed accountable governance for the people of Ondo State.
The party noted that it is a huge shame and mockery for Nigerian democracy that political mandate in Nigeria can only be achieved by vote purchase, ballot box stuffing and falsification of results, which are pillars of subversions of the real will and true mandate of the people.
According to the statement, after listening to the confession of the woman in a viral video in an interview on a national television that she was paid by the APC for her vote, Dame Olabisi Adu wondered how if any good thing can come out of a corruptive electoral process, affirming that vote buying and induced voting of any sort is a criminal offence punishable under the electoral act.
She said, “To save democracy in Ondo State, concerned stakeholders at the meeting resolved not to go to sleep but to be more vigilant to rescue democracy from the clutches of predatory and transactional politicians, who are bent on weaponising poverty and impoverishing the ordinary people so as to make them easy prey to buy with peanuts during elections, since the people have been pauperised by those in government to the point of desperation for survival.
“At the end of our Stakeholders’ consultation, it was popularly resolved that an inclusive mobilisation committee be urgently set up to initiate a political shadow team to mobilise the good people of Ondo State, especially the Youths, Civil Society and the Obi-dients to engage those in power and put them constantly on their toes in the interest of mass prosperity of the Ondo people and to halt a situation, where government is employed as a business to make the people poor to be able to induce them with peanuts during elections” Olabisi Adu stated.
