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| Lagos State Governor elect, Babatunde Raji Fashola |
The election, which many had thought would be a close contest between Fashola and the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Dr. Ade Dosunmu, turned out to be a one-sided affair as the ACN candidate scored 1, 509,113, representing 81.03 per cent of the total valid votes to beat the PDP candidate to a distant second.
Dosunmu polled 300,450, representing 16.13 per cent of the votes, to come a distant second in the election. The ACN also won all the 40 seats in the state House of Assembly.
Fourteen other candidates, representing political parties, including the Congress for Progressive Change and the National Advance Party, participated in the poll.
He said having satisfied the requirement of the electoral law, Fashola was qualified to rule the state for four more years.
Jubilation broke out among the ACN supporters, led by the party agent at the collation centre at the Lagos INEC office, Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, as soon as the Professor of International Relations at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, declared Fashola the winner of the election.
Speaking with our correspondent after Fashola was declared the winner, Afikuyomi, who is also the state Commissioner for Tourism, described the victory as a well-deserved one.
“The election was free and fair, the collation process was transparent and acceptable to us and the whole process has shown that INEC’s promise that the votes of voters will count has been kept. In fact, Prof. Jega has come to prove to us that he is a man of his words.”
Asked what magic the ACN that lost the presidential election on April 16 did to turn the table against the PDP in the governorship election, Afikuyomi said that hardwork, the party’s reputation and the enviable performance of Fashola tilted the election in favour of his party.
Afikuyomi added that the massive votes recorded by the candidate of the PDP, President Jonathan Goodluck, during the presidential election also created tension among the ACN members.
This, he said, forced the party to increase the intensity of its campaign and political strategies, adding that this contributed to the landslide victory recorded by the party in the generally peaceful election.
He denied insinuations that Jonathan won in Lagos because of an alleged collaboration with the President, saying that Lagosians were peculiar voters who could decide to vote for any candidate of their choice without being tele-guided.
He, however, said that if the ACN/CPC alliance had worked out, the voting pattern might have changed.
Earlier, Akinterinwa had also declared that the ACN also won all the 40 seats in the House of Assembly election, with the party candidate in Eti-Osa 2 state constituency scoring 11,214 to beat the son of Nigeria’s Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Ibrahim Obanikoro, who scored 9,446 votes.
He also added that the incumbent Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji, was re-elected after he polled 16,348 votes to beat the PDP candidate, who scored 8,853, to clinch the Ikeja 2 State Constituency ticket.
Giving a further breakdown of the results on local council basis, Akinterinwa said that Fashola scored 55, 108 of the 74,698 total votes cast as against the 16,218 garnered by Dosumu in Ikeja Local Government.
He also said that Fashola polled 52, 130 votes to defeat his closest rival, Dosumu, who scored 14, 147 votes in Eti-Osa Local Government.
Fashola also garnered 38,201 of the 50,623 valid votes to beat Dosumu, who scored 8,828 in Apapa Local Government.
Akinterinwa also said that the incumbent governor also defeated the PDP candidate in Epe Local Government with a vote of 24,983 as against Dosumu’s 5,610 votes.
By Segun Olugbile and Dayo Oketola Courtesy Of: Punch
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