New facts have emerged of how the House of Representatives primary election of the All Progressives Congress (APC), held in Epe Federal Constituency was rigged in favour of one of the aspirants contesting for the seat.
It was reliably gathered that out of the 19 wards in the Federal Constituency, elections were held in only 11 wards, which fall under Eredo and Ikosi/Ejinrin Local Council Development Areas, while elections in the remaining 8 wards, which fall under Epe Local Government were said not to have held due to the violence that broke out in the area.
Sources close to our reporter alleged that the violence in Epe LGA, which claimed a life, scared the APC members from coming out to participate in the process.
However, it was gathered that despite not holding the primary in the 8 wards, results later emanated from these wards, which eventually favoured the incumbent House of Reps member, Hon. Wale Raji.
Our reporter who was on ground in Epe confirmed that the exercise went peacefully in the 6 wards in Ikosi/Ejinrin LCDA and the 5 wards in Eredo LCDA, with the results in favour of one of the aspirants, Hon. Olusegun Olulade, the member representing Epe Constituency II in the Lagos State House of Assembly.
It was also gathered that one of the 5 aspirants, Mr. Tunde Agbabiaka who was not cleared by the party to take part in the exercise, ended up participating in the process, because there was no information to that effect.
According to source who spoke our reporter, pointed out that in Ward M1 which falls under Eredo LCDA, a particular APC in the area, popularly referred to as Wastab, forced the party members to vote for a particular candidate.
“When we started voting in Ward M1, Wastab came and started forcing people to leave Eleniyan and move to Wale Raji lane, it was very difficult for us to disobey him because we know we will be victimized if we refused to do as he commanded.
“Most of the party members in Ward M1 wanted to vote for Eleniyan but when he (Wastab) came out and saw that most party members were queuing behind Olulade, he started forcing them to go and vote for Wale Raji.
“After the whole exercise, we were surprised with the results, because members who came out to vote were not up to 1000, but Wale Raji ended up scoring over 1000 votes. We discovered that they added to the results,” the source stated.
Later in the evening, our reporter visited Epe LGA, which was the collation centre and after waiting for several hours, the presiding officer failed to announce the total results.
