He makes no mistake about this even as his persuasion is logic-based. The Peoples Democratic Party senatorial candidate for Lagos West, Mr. Segun Adewale, in this encounter with Ojo M. Maduekwe, explains why the PDP must take his election seriously

He may not have framed it the way the headline of this encounter is cast, kanyone with the knowledge of winning elections in Lagos will understand what is likely to happen to the chances of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in its bid to unseat the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the State, if the PDP decides to ignore the warnings of Mr. Segun Adewale.

Lagos West is the biggest senatorial district in Nigeria with over half of Lagos population. The chunk of the winning votes comes from Alimosho, a densely populated part of the senatorial district and so, it remains the electoral cash cow of the ruling party. 

Adewale is the PDP candidate for this year’s Lagos West Senatorial district election, and from the look of things, doesn’t seem to be getting adequate support from his party. In an encounter with THISDAY, he kept dodging the question of the kind of support that he was getting from the national leadership of the PDP.

“Right now, I am talking to the leaders of my party and trying to get support because if we lose Lagos West Senatorial district, we will lose Lagos. This can affect the entire result of the president, because he is not only required to win but he must win with two-third majority.” According to Adewale, it is for this reason that the APC candidate “is being funded heavily.”

On the pages of newspapers, although that may not be the case when you take a tour of the Lagos West, the candidate of the APC, Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, also known as ‘Yayi’, seems quite popular, even though he was a candidate for Ogun before he returned to Lagos after he was allegedly rejected in the gateway state. However, while Adeola is seen as “Tinubu’s choice” and a part of the establishment, Adewale is regarded as the “People’s choice”.

Though he was being economical with the truth, it was glaring that unlike Adeola, who has been getting massive support from his party and godfather, former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, Adewale was not getting the same type of support from his party or the presidency.
Adeola has his posters everywhere in Lagos, with ‘Yayi’ boldly written on them; those of Adewale are scantily spread across the State.

Even though he insisted on not talking about it, he nonetheless acknowledged that the few posters of his that you find are being financed solely by him, including the mobilisation of supporters.

Not new to this, Adewale has been financing community projects with his personal money as far back as 1994, even better than what Adeola is rumoured to have done with public funds.

Adewale has graded kilometres of roads, donated transformers, generators and dug boreholes for communities, sponsored students to Nigerian private universities, donated millions of naira for empowerment programmes, and more. This is believed to have endeared him to the people, and is expected to rub off on his party’s chances.

But it appears that his party does not understand the import of the choice of Adewale to represent it or the importance of his defeating Adeola. The importance of the Lagos West Senatorial district to the PDP in winning Lagos State can be understood better if the party considers that the district has specifically 4,769 polling units, and a voting population of about 4 million people in 2011. The new population count, taking into consideration the deduction by INEC, is said to be about 3.3 million voters.

When analysing these facts, Adewale alleged that there was a manipulation in the deduction of the voting population. “Even the deduction is selective. For instance, in my area where I have strength, they told us that the machine was corrupted and over 200,000 names wiped off.”

With the shift in dates of the elections, it is only a matter of weeks before he faces the opposition candidate. “Yayi cannot defeat me,” Adewale told THISDAY. He lists his popularity amongst the voters, and the number of community projects he’s done as proof that in a credibly conducted election, the APC candidate does not stand a chance.

“Yayi has been in the Senate (he meant House of Representatives) but has never moved a single motion or sponsored any bill. He has never brought the federal government presence to our community. All he has been doing is to be one chairman of a committee to another, where he will make billions of dollars.

“He has no single bill to his credit for us, and yet he wants to go back there and represent the interest of Tinubu and Aregbesola. Yayi cannot defeat me. The only problem is this issue of PVC. The PVC collection all over the country is skewed towards areas where the APC has their strength. I wonder what our party leaders and presidency are doing about this.”

Adewale takes the PVC issue seriously because he has been a victim of election rigging in the past. Having contested twice for elective positions and lost, not because he was less qualified or that he did not win, but because he was allegedly rigged out of the election, Adewale sees the irregularity in the distribution of PVCs as a serious threat to his party.

He narrated how in 2007 and 2011 he was rigged when he contested for the Lagos State House of Assembly and the House of Representatives respectively. “In 2007 I lost on technical grounds caused as a result of rigging by INEC in conjunction with ACN. I contested under the Labour Party in 2007 for the Lagos State House of Assembly, Constituency 001 in Alimosho.

“The election would have been won by me with a high margin because the kind of followers that I have are the cult-like kind of followership. A lot of them are not politicians but people that I talk to and make understand that we cannot continue to leave politics in the hands of the politicians alone.

“All that the people want is how we can get change in our community. So it is difficult to convince them not to vote for me. So what did they do? The ACN, now APC, connived with the INEC director of operations to deliberately remove my party logo from the ballot paper. So no one could vote for me on the Election Day. I was disenfranchised. I went to court, but they kept adjourning the case until I had no choice but to give up.”

In 2011, the same thing, he said, happened. “The same director of operations worked against me in collaboration with the same ACN. I scored over 121,000 votes, which was the highest in Nigeria for any House of Representatives election, because Dimeji Bankole scored 22,000. Mukaila who was supposed to be the speaker scored 33,000 votes.

“My vote was divided into two, and they gave me 57,000 votes. Even that number of votes for me, is the highest in South-west Nigeria, because the highest was that of Mukaila. We went to court, and got an injunction from the court that they should go and recount the votes. When they did, we discovered that they added April 2 election that we first did to the April 9 election to give Adeola (Yayi) 73,000 votes.

“When we removed the April 2 seconds, we discovered that what was Adeola’s original score was a little over 30,000 votes. We were supposed to be declared winner, but they kept on postponing and adjourning until time was against us. We went on appeal. In the appeal, Dr. Banire, lawyer to the ACN, filed out of time, and INEC did not file anything.

“So the only case before the judge was my case and result. The judge said he was angry with Banire and co for filing out of time. He said that based on this, he was going to give judgement on Wednesday. On Wednesday the judge said that he cannot deliver the judgement, that his colleague will do it.

“He was the one that was angry on Monday with Banire for filing out of time, and saying that he was going to give judgement based on what was on his table, which was my case and the result. Now he was saying that his colleague should deliver the judgement. His colleague then said that my case had no merit. They then adjourned the case indefinitely.

“This was in 2011. Out of the 11 wards, we had won 8 wards already when Aregbesola came from Osun State with MOPOL and sent everyone out.”

Even though he sounds confident of his chances, Adewale’s fears are that what happened in 2007 and 2011 are likely to happen again in 2015. “Now in 2015 again, the same INEC director of operations is still there and my party is not doing anything about this man,” Adewale said.

Aside the contributions he has managed to get from some people, Adewale maintained that he was yet to get any support from the national leadership of his party. “We are waiting for my party to get back to us from Abuja. Leaders in the party such as Obanikoro and Chief Bode George have been helpful in their personal capacity, but we are waiting for the party.”

He implored the PDP to understand that the APC intends to rig the 2015 elections through the distribution of the PVCs. “Everybody is fighting about PVC, but the opposition APC is not saying anything. That means they are the ones working hand-in-hand with Jega.

“Jega failed; he collected 88 billion naira four years ago. Now election was supposed to be about a week ago and I am being disenfranchised. A lot of people that want to vote for me are disenfranchised. I cannot vote for myself. From Amuwo to Ojo to Ajeromi/Ifelodun, anywhere the non-indigenes will vote for the presidency, they are being disenfranchised.”

An associate of Adewale told THISDAY that President Goodluck Jonathan was making a mistake by paying little attention to Adewale.
“The president should learn to differentiate between political jobbers with no interest in the outcome of the election, and the foot soldiers who are desirous of him winning, because they too want to win their elections.

“The political jobbers are only out to profit themselves. If the president wants to win the election in Lagos, then he should pay more attention to the foot soldiers. If he wants to win, then he must be dining with the foot soldiers and Adewale is one foot soldier he should not toy with.”