Adegboyega Oyetola, the APC’s nominee for governor, has declared himself certain of winning today’s governorship election in Osun State.
In a similar vein, Senator Ademola Adeleke, the candidate for the People’s Democratic Party, voiced his confidence in winning the election, which is being held in 3763 voting places across the state’s 30 local government areas.
In addition to the two candidates, there are 11 other candidates running for governor, including Dr. Akin Ogunbiyi of the Accord Party, Lasun Yusuf of the Labour Party, and 11 others.
The Oyetola stated on Friday that the incumbent governor was certain of winning because he had performed admirably over the last four years and the people of the state would reward him with victory at the polls. He was speaking through his chief press secretary, Ismail Omipidan.
He said, ” We have nothing to fear because the governor has performed creditably well in the past four years and we are confident of victory at the poll.”
The PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, who is running for president, declared that the opposition party would win in Osogbo on Thursday.
Atiku said, “Our victory in Osun, by God’s grace and the overwhelming decision of the electorate, will send a strong message to the ruling APC party that their reign has come to an end. APC’s loss in Osun is a win for the people of the state. It is when the people win that the PDP can truly boast of victory. And that is the promise that the PDP holds, not just in Osun but everywhere else.”
Residents also claimed that some political parties began “pre-election vote-buying to beat security agents on the election day,” according to news reports on Friday.
Osogbo locals claimed they received N5,000 before the election. However, two of them claimed that the money was given to certain of them because they could be trusted to cast their votes.
Vote-trading is one of the elements, according to the Kimpact Development Initiative, that will increase the amount of invalid votes cast in the Osun State governor’s race on Saturday.
This was said at the pre-election press conference on Friday in Osogbo by the Senior Programme Manager, John Adebayo.
He said, ” There are some factors responsible for high number of invalid votes in elections and vote buying is one of them.
“Some voters will deliberately vote for Party A and Party B to satisfy their conscience because they have collected money from the two.”
The organisation added that it had noticed a decline in voter turnout in the off-season governorship elections since 2015.
Aside from this, he added, illiteracy frequently contributes to a significant proportion of invalid votes.
Adebayo said that certain parties have begun endorsing gubernatorial candidates on a transactional basis, which he described as a higher degree of vote buying.
In the meantime, some locals have expressed concern that they might not cast their votes in today’s election due to the threat of violence.
There may be violence, according to several residents of Ede town, therefore they might stay at home.
One of them, Kamoru Ogundayo, said “Some hoodlums were arrested in Osogbo on Friday because of their plans to cause violence during the election.
“How are we sure that there won’t problem today? I will only go and vote only if I observe that there is not crisis u til around 12noon”
