National Publicity Secretary of
the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mallam Lanre Issa Onilu has said that the
party lost election in some key states controlled by it because the party and
government controlled by it gave every Nigerian the opportunity to contest
election freely without interference in the electoral process.
The APC lost the governorship
elections in Imo, Adamawa, Bauchi and Oyo states, four states controlled by APC
governors, while losing the Presidential election in Oyo, Ondo and Edo states.
Onilu told a group of Reporters
at the weekend that before the 2019 elections, it was unheard of that the
ruling party lost election in states controlled by it.
He said: “In Sokoto, we lost by
less than 500 votes, but in Kano, we won by thousands of votes. Which one is
narrow? Is it the Sokoto that PDP have claimed they have won with three hundred
or Kano that we won by over 20,000 votes, so it is not narrow.
“But the important thing to note
is that, and that’s my word. Being a journalist myself, I begin to ask myself,
what has happened to us in the media? That our role is to interpret events.
“If we interpret these events
very well, you will notice that you have a ruling party that is supposed to
mobilize all the resources of coercion and all instrument of coercion to get
what we want. You just said that we lost some States, major States.
“I will tell you that the only
reason that happened was because this party has provided a platform for people
to go and face the electorate and for the electorate to pass judgement on the
people that have been put forward without anybody doing anything against it.
“We have just talked about Rivers
State. Whatever was going on in Rivers State, as far as this party is
concerned, belongs to people of Rivers State. Otherwise we will say okay, move
in and do that. We have witnessed it in this country under PDP that the whole
state would be locked down. Their own method is win by all means, let others go
to tribunal. We didn’t apply that.
“You have seen major politicians
in this country, big politicians in this country losing election in this
country even in our own party. You saw a serving governor in Oyo State who
couldn’t win one-third of the State. A governor who is governing the entire
State couldn’t win one-third of the entire State to get to the Senate.
“You saw a struggle that is still
going on in Akwa-Ibom State, with somebody of the calibre of Godswill Akpabio.
Even though we know there are issues to that and it would be corrected but at
the same time, we should have deployed, in such a way that we will want to
arm-twist anybody or the system or manipulate the system.
“That question did not even arise
at all and I think the media should step back from the millieu, so that they
don’t get carried away by that kind of ‘flu’ politicians are going with so that
they can see the issue clearly and say what is responsible for this.
“You could see that we lost Oyo
in presidential election where we have a sitting governor. We lost Ondo where
we have a sitting governor. But because we didn’t want to condone impunity, we
did all we did in Imo in a way to undermine ourselves. The choice we had was to
either to accept what would have amounted to the impunity, so that we could win
Imo ordo the right thing. But we said no, we would rather do what is decent.”
On the chances of the party ahead
of the 2023 elections, Onilu expressed confidence that the outcome of the 2019
elections has further increased the chances of the APC, saying “the chances are
even now brighter.
“You know why? Nigerians have
shown that they have also come of age and that no matter who you are, you can
be rejected. See what happened in Kwara State for instance. With the behemoth
status of somebody like Bukola Saraki whose opponent’s results nearly doubled
his own, not a single person was slapped. He couldn’t even go to tribunal to
protest.
“The only way this could happen
was because voters have come up of age, and they now look at performance unlike
sentiments that they’ve been following.
Speaking on the just concluded
elections in Rivers state, Onilu said “we don’t have anything to do with the
Rivers State election. APC didn’t have candidates in Rivers State and that is
why from the beginning, we didn’t throw ourselves so much into it.
“You know what the Supreme Court
did. They said we were not qualified to contest. So, on that basis, whatever
happened in Rivers, whether a Local Government that gave 80% total votes during
the Presidential election suddenly produced 320,000 for Wike during
governorship election didn’t hurt us in any way.
“If INEC says that was correct,
fine. It is up to the parties involved to take actions if they find it
necessary. But for us as a party, we didn’t have the opportunity to contest
unfairly in Rivers State.
On the adoption of the candidate
of the African Action Congress by the party, Onilu said the APC as a party
never adopted any candidate, but was quick to stress that the party also did
not forbid any local arrangement that may have been made in the state.7f
He said: “What happened last time
was whether what Amaechi did amounted to anti-party activities and I said No.
Adopting any candidate in the state did not deny any of our candidates anything
in Rivers State. So, I separated what happened in Rivers from Ogun and Imo
where we had our own candidates and our own members worked against own
candidates and worked for some other candidates.
“It is different in Rivers.
Whatever local arrangement they had there, we were not aware of it and we were
not part of it. I’m sure you didn’t see anybody there campaigning for anybody
outside of APC.”
He also dismissed insinuations
that the Kwara state governor-elect was enmeshed in a certificate scandal and
therefore not qualified to contest the election.
He said “there is no any scandal.
You see, APC is a party of due process. Once you comply with your own rules,
things become easy for you. We have a process and they (the then governorship
aspirants) went through the right process.
“We are confident and completely
certain that our governor-elect has nothing to hide. The certificates are
genuine. You see, it is laughable that of all things, they cannot come out to
say the election was rigged because they were traced even beyond their own
imagination.
“So, they think maybe they could
find something to use at the tribunal because they can’t just walk away. But
they need to wake up and face the reality of that defeat because it is an
eternal defeat”.
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