TELL Magazine

• …Sends strong message that it would be balance of terror in March 11 polls

• …. Says Tinubu’s victory would be short-lived

The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Lagos State, Abdul-Azeez Olajide Adediran, aka Jandor, has sent out a warning signal that the governorship and state House of Assembly elections in the state March 11, 2023 would be won by hook or crook. Adediran said with the kind of flawed election conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC last Saturday, they would be going into the election to win at all cost, and the other candidates can go to court.
He also chided the president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the godfather of Lagos politics, whose victory he predicted would be short-lived, “to call his mad dogs to order” and “start acting presidential”. He berated the state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu for keeping mum on the attack on Lagosians during the election.
According to Adediran, “All of us had thought that INEC will live up to its constitutional responsibility. We know how this is being done; we can also do it. We were together all the days that we’ve done on Saturday. But because we have seen one, two, three elections and all of us relaxed to say the dark days are over. But now with this that they have done, so, we will go to the next poll, all of us prepared, to do the needful and make sure that we are declared the winner of that election; they can also go to court.
“This is what is going to happen because clearly, INEC has said to us that it really does not matter what they say or the constitutional provision of the Electoral Act; that we can just play it anyhow. But this is my own reaction to it. Everybody has seen it; it’s been condemned everywhere. If you say to us that this election, we’re going to be uploading results from the polling units, we expected that that should happen because we have seen it happen in Anambra; we saw it happen in Osun and Ekiti elections. So, all of us had thought we’ve been able to put those dark days behind us. But somehow, it happened this way….Unfortunately, INEC are saying, no, no, no, there is still the room for you to be declared winner and the rest can go to court. So, we are ready now….We will come all out, irrespective of what has happened at the centre and take our state back … The attitude of declare us the winner, let them go to court, this election on Saturday, we would meet ourselves. When iron touch iron one would bend”.
Hinting that there was collaboration between the Labour Party and some other opposition parties during Saturday’s presidential election that delivered victory to Obi, Adediran said of the 582,000 votes that LP polled, “358,000 of these votes were from my senatorial district. Our own senator representing Lagos West won that election because as we were voting LP at the presidential level, they were voting PDP for senators because these are traditional PDP voters; and we have said this before now that Peter Obi going elsewhere, Atiku staying somewhere else, of course it will divide the votes.
“If you go to 2019 election, and you see the number of votes polled by Atiku Abubakar, you will see that it’s exactly the same pattern of these votes that we had in this that Peter Obi had to poll. When we won that election, they went back to change the entire figure to suit them and declare their own candidate winner. This has been their style; I understand this style because I was coming from there. Now that we know that it is open, we will go into this coming election now; everybody prepared, and let’s go and be declared winner and the rest can go to court. So, we are ready now…. How many candidates did you see APC running around with with guns; Jandor, why? It’s because he knows too much. It’s because he understands the terrain; the PDP won in Lagos in 2019; they know. We will come all out, irrespective of what has happened at the centre, and take our state back”.
Miffed by the scale of violence witnessed in Lagos during the presidential poll, Adediran lampooned Governor Sanwo-Olu for pretending as if nothing happened. According to him, “It worries me that we have people attacking everybody everywhere under the watch of a sitting governor, and not a single statement to condemn that. We will install a government all of us can call our own”.
He insisted that while they (the opposition) have been able to have their say, “This next election, it’s not enough to have our say, we should have our way in the state of Lagos. The government that is there that has spent 24 years, let them spend 100 years, they will continue to harass the people of Lagos no matter where you come from”.
He recalled that in 1993, when Chief M.K.O Abiola won the election, there was jubilation everywhere. “This morning, the information that has gotten to me on my way here (Arise TV) was that APC people have started attacking PDP people in EtI-Osa in Ajah area of Lagos; Yoruba people. So, I think I would like to speak to the winner of the election at the centre that perhaps he should start acting presidential. Even though it may be short-lived, he should start acting presidential and speak to all his mad dogs that are in Lagos. We should have a Lagos that would be saner this time. He should speak to this. There should be jubilation everywhere but the reverse is the case. It’s speaking to something; you are attacking the people”.
Very optimistic of winning the governorship election, Jandor posited that “We are not ruling out collaboration with Labour. But let us say this to ourselves. The election of Saturday, the votes that were polled in Lagos were not Labour Party’s votes, they were Peter Obi’s votes and everybody voted for Peter Obi; elites, everybody, including Yoruba elites….
Contending that there is a difference between Obi and the Labour Party, Adediran argued that “Labour Party has always been on the ballot since 1999, what has the party done with that? Everybody that trooped out on Saturday to vote everywhere in Nigeria,… did so for that personality called Peter Obi. Let nobody delude himself to think it was the Labour Party. Banky W lost in Eti-Osa to a candidate that did not even know himself that he was contesting. Banky W didn’t lose to that guy; he lost to Peter Obi. (Ndidi) Elumelu, in Delta, a sitting rep, lost to not whoever got it, but to Peter Obi.
“Everybody came all out to say we are giving this guy our votes; the personality, what he represents. And of course, it’s just that your name can’t be on the ballot. If he had gone as an independent candidate, he would have gotten the same votes because he was the one that was voted for. Two, if you try to do a mistake and think it’s a Labour Party thing, we will remind you so many things about it. So, I am saying to you again and again that majority of these votes, especially the ones that came from the west, they are traditional PDP votes. If the PDP and Atiku had gone out as one entity in this race as it used to be, of course the result has shown for itself. The mistake we shouldn’t make in Lagos is to have a replica of that; we can avert it”.
Confident that with collaboration, it was possible to defeat the APC behemoth Saturday March 11, Adediran noted that “Places where opposition has never won before, we won landslide because the people stood their ground; the same manner we can do this and put forward our best foot to say you know what, let us come together and do this. We are ready. In fact, I was the first to start talking to other governorship candidates in Lagos. I went to Olufunsho Doherty immediately after our first debate to say “egbon, yes, even though I’m of the almighty PDP, we can talk and come together and confront these people.” He would testify to that. I went to the NRM candidate, Braithwaite. I said you know what, we can talk. With Gbadebo, talks are ongoing. It’s about time that prominent Lagosians stepped up and look at us, look at the amount of work we have done, let us put our best foot forward in this election and let us rally round ourselves. We will defeat them; this Saturday, we will defeat them landslide and this will be their last in this state”.