The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the Ekiti State governorship election of 2026, Peter Obafemi, has alleged irregularities in Saturday’s exercise.
In an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, claiming the exercise was marred by vote-buying.
When asked to assess the election, the SDP flagbearer said, “I think it was full of intimidation.”
“Well, I will put it like this: in my own polling unit, I went to cast my vote; coming out, I was shocked. I saw someone with bagloads of money,” Obafemi said.
He alleged that the culprit is a member of “one of these major parties and is being protected by the police”. The SDP candidate said the money amounted to “millions of naira”.
“I am not alleging. I saw it in my own polling unit,” he said, accusing the police and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of being “very compromised” in the conduct of the governorship poll.
Obafemi, who scored 179 votes in the poll, asked INEC to “look into ways that they can help Nigerians for this general election [2027] that is coming up: how they can abort this act of vote-buying.”
According to him, some of his campaign banners were pulled down in the lead-up to the 2026 governorship election.
INEC early Sunday declared Governor Biodun Oyebanji of the All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner of the exercise, which was held in 16 local government areas of the South-West state.
He scored 319,224 votes to beat his opponents. In second position was the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Oluwole Oluyede, who got 40,543 votes.
Dare Bejide of the African Democratic Congress polled 12,872 votes from the exercise.
Meanwhile, Oyebanji has said his re-election is an attestation to the popularity of his policies, promising the residents more development and people-oriented policies in the next four years.
He is also giving an olive branch to his opponents. In his acceptance speech on Sunday in Ado-Ekiti, Oyebanji said he has visited some of them after the election results were announced by INEC.
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