Osun poll: PDP, APC bicker over outcome as Adeleke heads to Tribunal

The Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress are engaged in war of words over the outcome of the Osun State governorship election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission had in the early hours of Friday declared Gboyega Oyetola of the APC as the winner of the poll, with PDP’s Senator Ademola Adeleke coming second.
This followed the main election on Saturday and rerun on Thursday.
Reacting to the development, Adeleke, through his brother, Dele Adeleke, said he will retrieve his stolen mandate through the Tribunal.
He said: “It will be foolish to allow this 419 result to stand.
“The party will meet and I believe that the tribunal is the next step to take.
“Adeleke’s mandate can’t be stolen, it will be retrieved.
“The wish of the people will stand at the end.”
In its own reaction via a statement by Kunle Oyatomi, its Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy in Osun State, the APC said PDP got its votes in the first election through manipulation.
Oyatomi said nobody expected that the PDP would come second during the election, adding that most people in the state believed that it would be a straight fight between the APC and Social Democratic Party.
He said: “We have always known and have made ourselves clear before the election that the PDP had made elaborate arrangement to rig the election through the manipulation of the card readers.
“And it was this process that made them get the votes allocated to them in the first ballot.
“We like Osun people to understand that the run off votes went the way it did because the PDP was unable to manipulate the card readers this time around and fortunately the police thwarted their plot of buying and trying to use the PVCs of unsuspecting voters.
“That was why some of their leaders were arrested. So the PDP should look for other excuses.
“They attempted to win by fraud, they failed in the first round and eventually lost the rerun election.”