Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State has dared his predecessor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, to go ahead and prove how soldiers rigged the June 21 governorship election in his (Fayose’s) favour.
Speaking with journalists in Ado-Ekiti on Sunday, Fayose declared that he was ready to defend himself before a court of competent jurisdiction.
In what seems like a reaction to the interview granted by Fayemi on an Akure, Ondo State-based ADABA 88.9 FM last Thursday, whereby he claimed that some soldiers are willing to testify in support of the leaked audio recording on how the military was used by the Peoples Democratic Party to rig the polls, Fayose said the ex-governor was only playing to the gallery.
In the same vein, the South-West PDP has urged Fayemi to accept that he lost the election because “Ekiti people simply rejected him”.
In a statement in Ado Ekiti by the Publicity Secretary, Mr. Dare Omotosho, the party said “the new angle to the All Progressives Congress propaganda is more like taking an illusion too far and testing the will of Ekiti people and Nigerians”.
Fayose said, “The soldiers should come to give evidence and explain where and how they were instructed to rig the election, whether they were instructed to thumb print ballot papers, or they were instructed to snatch ballot boxes, how many of such ballot papers they thumb printed and the number of boxes they snatched.
“Fayemi is only playing to the gallery. For those who heard my voice, it was me accusing General Aliyu Momoh of colluding with the All Progressive Congress to rig the election.
“The problem Fayemi is having is the defeat he suffered in the 16 local government area of the state. He is yet to recover from the shock, and he is fretting over the prospect of going down in political history of Nigeria as the first sitting governor to suffer such monumental defeat.
“The defeat suffered by Fayemi in that election, will in no distant future become a case study by political scholars in Universities across the country”.
In the leaked audio recording published by Sahara Reporters, Fayose, then governorship candidate of the PDP; a former Minister of State for Defence, Mr. Musiliu Obanikoro; Sen. Iyiola Omisore; Minister of Police Affairs, Mr. Jelili Adesiyan and a military commander, Brig.-Gen. Aliyu Momoh, were heard fine-tuning plans on how to clampdown on APC leaders and grant PDP supporters unfettered access across the state during the polls among others.
But Fayose said, “All that Fayemi is trying to do is to rubbish [an] election adjudged best by local and international observers.
“I used to have respect for him before now but events after the election has exposed his true colour that he is not a democrat, but a pretender. If APC doesn’t win, the election is rigged, but once the victory goes their way, it is the most credible election in the world. And these are people claiming to have schooled under Barak Obama”.