A Lawmaker representing Ondo South Senatorial district, Senator Jimoh Ibrahim has lamented the outcome of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ondo 2024 governorship primary election held on April 20th 2024, describing the exercise as a “mega fraud” that would end at the Supreme Court.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday in Abuja, Senator Ibrahim said the primary election did not hold in 159 out of the 203 polling units across the three senatorial districts in Ondo State.
He insisted that Kogi State governor, Mr Ododo Ahmed Usman, who was the Chairman of the Ondo State Primary Election Committee, fraudulently declared Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa winner in cahoots with the former Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege.
Armed with the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC’s report, the lawmaker disclosed that he has filed a complaint at a Federal High Court in line with provisions of the Electoral Act, which stipulates that “complaints arising from primary election be filed within 14 days”.
The INEC report which Senator Ibrahim personally made available to journalists, shows that primary election did not hold in 15 out of the 18 LGAs in Ondo State.
Senator Ibrahim further alleged that Governor Ododo and Senator Omo-Agege changed the date of the collation of results midway to allow them to perfect the “electoral fraud” in favour of the incumbent governor of Ondo State, Lucky Aiyedatiwa.
To buttress his point, Senator Ibrahim pointed to a letter written by Governor Ododo, which was addressed to the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Akure, purportedly changing the date of collation on the day of the primary election.
Parts of the letter read: “Please refer to our letters on the above-stated subject matter, dated 5th April 2024 with Ref. Number APC/NHDQ/INEC/19024/016 wherein we requested for a change in the State Collation Centre.
“We are writing to further inform the Commission of the postponement of the collation of election results for the All Progressives Congress, (APC) primary election, which is scheduled for 20th April 2024.
“The postponement became necessary due to unforeseen circumstances regarding the submission of results from the Local Government Collation Centre Officers.
“Despite our best efforts to ensure timely collation, most of our Local Government collation officers will arrive late, as a result of logistic challenges which have led to a delay in the collation processes”.
Gov. Lucky Aiyedatiwa had emerged winner of the election, after scoring 48, 569 votes to beat other aspirants in the race.
Emmanuel Ukoh
