Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his wife, Ibijoke, voted with invalid voter cards, a witness has told the Lagos State Governorship Electi
Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his wife, Ibijoke, voted with invalid voter cards, a witness has told the Lagos State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal.
The witness, Dayo Israel, who said he served as an agent for the Labour Party (LP) for Unit 006, Ward 15, Lagos Island Local Government, gave this testimony as part of the petition filed by LP’s 2023 governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, who is seeking to upturn Sanwo-Olu’s return.
According to reports, while being led in evidence by the Rhodes-Vivour’s lead counsel, Olumide Ayeni,SAN, the witness said: “I observed that the card reader showed their cards to be invalid but Sanwo-Olu and his wife were allowed to cast their votes and this is against INEC’s electoral process.”
Israel also listed cases of multiple casting of votes at the polling unit, stating that the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) failed to intervene.
“I also noted that there were cases of multiple casting of votes but INEC officials failed to intervene.
“I observed more than 3-4 people voting more than once at the polling unit. INEC staff conducted the elections, though they looked the other way when this was going on,” he said.
The witness under cross-examination from counsel to INEC, Charles Edosomwan, further alleged that he was beaten up by some thugs, which he claimed were of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said: “I am not a member of the Labour Party, but I was assigned as an agent. When the APC thugs recognised me as an LP agent, they beat me up. They also said if voters did not vote for APC, they would beat them too.”
Sanwo-Olu was in March declared winner of the governorship election in the state by INEC.
The governor who was the candidate of the APC polled 762,134 votes to defeat his closest rivals, Rhodes-Vivour of LP and the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olajide Adediran (Jandor), who got 312,329 and 62,449 votes, respectively.
