Admin l Saturday, July 16, 2022
OSOGBO, Nigeria – The Osun Governorship election has been acclaimed as generally peaceful without violence, even as vote buying persisted during the election.
The peaceful election has been attributed by heavy deployment of security men to Osun which resulted in the arrest of some thugs from Lagos on the eve of the election.
According to reports, the ruling party was paying as much as N17,000 per electorates to elect their candidate but that many are voting their conscience.
According to reports, some party agents were insisting on snapping of the ballot papers in return for monetary inducements. The sanctity of the ballots is also not protected as agents were able to look from where they were standing to see the party an electorate has voted for.
Consequently, in anticipation, some of the voters refused to fold their ballot papers before slotting it into the ballot boxes to be compensated with the money, which ranged for as much as N10, to N17, 000.
In one of the governorship candidate of the ADC said a pick up truck was packed in a Local government, with a lady in the truck dolling out cash for votes.
There are reports that voters were willing to vote and stand by their votes. A total of 1.9 million people were eligible to cast their votes based on PVCs, but according to reports, about 400,000 PVCs were not collected.
At the Local Government Area, where the APC General Secretary, Senator Iyiola Omisore cast his votes, many were seen hailing him, even as he cast his vote in the ballot. The INEC BVRs were however effective with some few glitches.
