The Olusola Oke Campaign Committee has cried out to President Muhammadu Buhari on the plans by members of his cabinet to surreptitiously release the sum of N7 billion to the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Ondo State, Mr Rotimi Akeredolu, from a bogus N10 billion infrastructural contract slated for Owo community of the State to perfect plans to rig the November 26, election in the state.
The Organisation while raising this alarm in Akure on Friday, alleged that the plan was hatched in the Federal Ministry of Works, Abuja wherein a bogus contract was without due process mooted for works on some infrastructures in Owo area of the state where Akeredolu hails from and then divert substantial parts of the money towards rigging the election.
In a statement by the Chairman of the Publicity Committee of the Organisation, Mr Kolawole Olabisi, “the boast of the APC which had been sedentary in its approach to canvassing for votes in the State is that they would rig this election even if only one vote is cast for them. They have been preaching it and now they have profess it with this dastardly plan perfected and supervised by the top echelons of the government to use government funds to make good their threat.”
According to the Olusola Oke Campaign Committee, the contract sum was perfected and released without going through due process and the money has now been earmarked as part of the war chest to be used by the APC to rig the election later this month.
“We want to appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to be aware of what is being done by members of his cabinet in their vaunted ambition to win this election at all cost and immediately arrest the situation. While we have been going round the state canvassing for votes from the people, they have remained in their offices boasting that they will use Federal Might to rig the election even if nobody votes for them.
“The APC members in Ondo have been preaching this strange gospel of rigging and we are now amazed by this latest antics to win the election with the award of a strange contract for a whopping N10 billion for Owo community where Akeredolu hails from with a view to releasing a whopping sum of N7 billion to him to make the rigging plan a reality.
“The pertinent question to ask now is that, why a contract in Owo, which has one of the best road networks in Ondo State? Who approved this contract sum and why did it not go through due process such contracts had to go through?
“We want to assure them that the people of Ondo State are watching them and the consequences of rigging election here await perpetrators. Winning election should not be a do-or-die affair,” the Committee posited in the statement.
While calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions (EFCC) and other anti-graft agencies in Nigeria to beam their searchlights on the activities of the Mr Babatunde Fashola-led Federal Ministry of Works, the Oke Campaign Committee, reminded them that those who live in glass houses do not throw stones.
Its words: “If we have been probing those who were alleged to have embezzled our treasure-troves and those who doled out monies without following due process, it will be strange that those sitting on the throne of Justice now are equally perpetrating the same offence they sit in justice over others, it is such an absurd development.
“We, therefore, called on President Buhari, a noted democrat and a man fabled for his aversion for graft to immediate call to order those attempting to make nonsense his fight against graft and election rigging the order of the day to order as it portends grave danger for the nation. Election must be free and fair and the will of the people must be allowed to prevail.”
