The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has accused Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, of sponsoring lawsuits against its candidates in the state.
The party’s National Chairman, Prof Ralph Okey Nwosu, made the allegation on Monday at a press conference held at the party’s secretariat in Abeokuta.
He said the lawsuits included the one filed by the state’s chapter of the Labour Party (LP) which barred all ADC candidates in the state from participating in the 2023 elections.
He specifically accused Abiodun of funding a former acting National Publicity Secretary of LP, Abayomi Arabambi, whom he described as a “political trader and hatchet jobber”, to thwart the chances of the ADC at the 2023 polls.
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The LP had dragged ADC, its Ogun governorship hopeful, Biyi Otegbeye, and other candidates of the party to court over non-compliance with the Electoral Act in the conduct of the party’s primaries.
Justice Akintayo Aluko, in his judgement, nullified all the primary elections conducted by ADC.
Aluko held that the primary elections which produced Otegbeye and the 26 House of Assembly candidates were not monitored by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
But the ADC national chairman, while reacting to the lawsuits, accused Abiodun of being behind the setback of the party.
He accused the governor of sponsoring LP to file the suits against his party and its candidates “with the intention to get us out of contention for the 2023 elections.”
Nwosu, however, vowed that the party would resist all attempts by the governor and his cohorts to thwart the chances of the party at the polls.
He said the party had approached the Court of Appeal to challenge the high court judgment.
In his reaction, the Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun, Tunde Olodunjoye, described Nwosu’s allegations as “laughable”, saying, “ADC is a toddling party” in the state.
“The party is suffering from self-imposed confusion and hasty miscalculation. The ADC chairman said, and I quote: ‘We have filed for redress at the Court of Appeal and we are confident that the orders of the lower courts shall be overturned and all our candidates will be revalidated.’
“The boast of ‘imminent victory at the Court of Appeal is not only arrogance taken too far characteristic of the Ogun senator sponsoring the party; it is also a deliberate blackmail of the judiciary.”
