The Lagos chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has on Tuesday, March 24, 2015 said that it had uncovered a plot by All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftains in the state – Governor Babatunde Fashola and National Leader Bola Tinubu to bribe royal fathers in the state in order to get votes from them and their subjects.
Making the claims was the spokesman of the PDP in Lagos, Taofeek Lawal, who revealed that a meeting – held at the instance of Tinubu – was scheduled to hold on Wednesday, March 25, 2015 where the said money was to be given to the monarchs.
Lawal further enthused, via a statement that the pair are planning to move against any monarch who refused to oblige, adding that the leaders of the APC had been holding several meetings with stakeholders in the same vein.
The statement read in parts: “We have been reliably informed by our source that the state governor has scheduled to meet monarchs in the state to induce or coerce them to adopt APC. He has also deducted N6bn from local government and state government accounts to compromise about 5,000 corpers and INEC officers on the day of elections at outlined voting and collation centres.
“Some corpers have already collected the money, which the governor calls support allowance. Some honest corpers have let us know this and that an offer of N200,000 per polling unit is planned for the Election Day by the governor who sent his lobbyists to them.”
“We caution governor Fashola not to victimise any monarch as he may just commit a sacrilege with spiritual consequence. On our part, we shall resist any unconventional way to defeat us in these elections. We shall resist any victimisation of our voters.
“We shall ensure that votes for PDP are cast and not compromised. We are indeed presently considering reporting Fashola to the National Human Rights Commission for violating the people’s rights to express and vote candidates of their choice.”
