Ebenezer Adeniyi, an agent of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Orolu local government area of Osun state, has described the supplementary election as “terrible”.
Speaking with journalists on Thursday, Adeniyi said things that happened during the rerun election were worse than the days of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).
NPN was the dominant political party between 1979 and 1983, the second republic.
Adeniyi said PDP members and agents were attacked and prevented from going near the polling centres to exercise their franchise on Thursday.
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“I am a party member and I was at Orolu overseeing all the happenings, the process was very bad, in all my years in politics, I have never seen something as terrible as this,” he said.
“Since yesterday, we noticed the presence of some hoodlums and we drew the attention of the security agents to it. We have our field boys and immediately there is any observation, they call us. See, there is a chieftain of APC in Orolu that harboured those guys, in fact, let me tell you, he is the care taker chairman committee in that local government.
“They were doing so many things and there were no checks put on them. We drew the attention of the police and they pretended as if they did not see anything and what we envisaged yesterday came to fruition today.
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“There were a lot of attacks on us, our people were not allowed to move even near the voting centres at Kajola, at Ikiya and Gbogbo, that is ward 8 and ward 9, they didn’t allow anybody to move near except the APC people.
“So many people were arrested, as I am talking to you, most of our people are still in the station, no charges against them, just to take them away from circulation until after the election.”
He alleged that the harassment was a conspiracy between the APC and the security operatives deployed in the state.
He said: “The same way you were molested, the way journalists were harassed was the same way our agents were harassed and driven away. Our people are in the hospital, they were wounded, and the police were looking without doing anything. One boy, Moshood, as I am talking to you, he is still in detention, the party secretary in that local government is also in detention for no just cause. The police turned their backs on us.
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“It is a grand conspiracy, I stand by this. The security agents are the main tool they used to harass us. They are to keep peace and are expected to belong to everybody, not only in a context like this but on any issue that involves every citizen.
“Honestly, it is very sad. My hands were weak; I’ve never witnessed an election like this all my life. I’ve been in active politics for over 27 years, even during NPN days, it wasn’t this bad, this is rape of democracy.”
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