by Kolapo Olapoju
The Peoples Democratic Party claims to have unearthed a scheme by the Lagos State Governor Raji Fashola and a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, to financially induce all Lagos monarchs, youth corp members and INEC officials participating in the election.
According to the Lagos chapter of the PDP, a meeting will hold on Wednesday (today) where Lagos monarchs would be given money.
A spokesperson for the Lagos PDP, Taofeek Lawal, released a statement alleging that Tinubu and Fashola intend to take action against any of the monarchs who refused to dance to their tune.
The statement said: “In a carrot and stick style, any monarch who rejects the offer is to be victimised and may be deposed before Saturday.”
“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.”
