By Esther Onyegbula

LAGOS—Peoples  Democratic Party, PDP, House of Representative candidate in Epe Federal Constituency of Lagos State, Chief Apeson Bola Gbabijo, has alleged that last Saturday’s election was rigged by the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the area.

Gbabijo, while addressing a press conference in Lagos, alleged that the mandate freely given to him by the electorate was “blatantly and brazenly taken away from him by APC and his opponent, Tunji Wale.

His words: “The just concluded election in my constituency was shrouded in so many controversies.   It was coloured in so many political atrocities like; stuffing of ballot boxes, chasing away of opponent’s agents and not allowing the INEC ad-hoc staff to carry out their functions, rather they used thugs to direct the affairs of the elections especially in my constituency.

“In Ise and Obada riverine communities, our agents who were on official assignment to monitor the elections were beaten and sent out of the units. During the elections, the Kabeyisi was the supervisor that went round in the community.  He allowed them to manipulate the votes seriously at ward B1, this gave them undue advantage.

“When the INEC Ad-hoc personnel said the elections were a stalemate, she said she consulted with officers of INEC in Abuja and they told her to move all materials to Lagos and discontinue further counting and stop any announcement of results. But to our dismay, we later heard that she was forced to announce the results by those left behind, because we left immediately she gave reasons why they can’t continue with the counting of votes that were there.

“At the time when there was an impasse, the ad-hoc officer told us that they had a stalemate, which means no victor no vanquished and she went further and said that she had instructions from Lagos and Abuja that they should stop further collation and apart from that, that she should transfer all materials and documents to Lagos in the presence of the Police and DSS.”