Adebayo Adenrele
A former senator and aspirant in the All Progressives Congress (APC) senatorial primary for Ekiti North Senatorial District, Ayo Arise, has warned that there would be maximum consequences following the declaration of the election’s results which he declared fraudulent and not a proper representation of the constituents.
Recall that the returning officer for the senatorial primary election in Ekiti State, Asipa Wasiu declared that the incumbent lawmaker, Senator Cyril Fasuyi polled 14,179 votes to secure his ticket while Senator Ayo Arise came second with 4,868 votes.
However, addressing journalists in his Oye-Ekiti, his home country, Arise claimed that he won the election with 8,687 votes while the sitting Senator polled 7,755 votes.
According to Arise, results collated from 33 wards where voting and counting were completed showed that he polled 8,687 votes, representing 48.1 per cent of the total ballots cast, while Fasuyi secured 7,755 votes.
He claimed the total votes cast in those wards stood at 18,051 with a turnout of 64.3 per cent.
Arise alleged that in 12 additional wards spread across the five local government areas of the district, electoral officials abandoned the process midway after realising he was in the lead.
He further alleged that in another 10 wards, officials failed to appear entirely, thereby preventing over 6,000 registered party members from voting.
The former senator maintained that the disruption of the process in the affected wards was deliberate and designed to alter the final outcome of the primary.
He accused the electoral committee of reducing his votes from 8,687 to 4,868 in the final declaration while allegedly increasing Fasuyi’s tally from 7,755 to 14,179 votes.
He called on the national leadership of the APC to intervene and correct the grave abuse of the democratic process.
He said in part, “I won the APC Ekiti North Senatorial Primary yesterday. That is the fact on which everything I say today rests. Not an allegation. Not a claim. A fact confirmed by the votes of our party members in ward after ward across this senatorial district.
“What was subsequently announced by the committee is not the result of this primary. It is the replacement of that result with a set of figures that did not come from the wards, cannot be reconciled with the registered membership of this party and are disproved by arithmetic so clear that no honest person can look at them and call what happened an election.
“Let me tell you what happened at the ward level – because the wards are the only place this primary was ever real.
“In thirty-three wards that completed their counting and reporting process, I led this primary with 8,687 votes- 48.1 percent of the total votes cast. My opponent, Fasuyi Cyril, was in second position with 7.755 votes. The total votes cast across those thirty-three wards was 18,051, representing a 64.3 percent turnout. Those are the ward results. They are captured in our live monitoring system, corroborated by agents present at every ward table and they exist.
“In every ward that completed its process, I was winning. My lead was 932 votes and growing.
“In twelve further wards, the party officials conducting the election waited until it was clear that I was winning – and then they abandoned their posts. They walked away mid-process. They left our members standing at the polling tables with no one to administer the count. Those twelve wards – spread across all five LGAs of this district – hold 5,756 registered members whose votes were sabotaged the moment the tally turned in my favour.
“In ten other wards, party officials never came at all. Our members 6,037 registered party men and women- queued from early morning. They waited. No one arrived. They went home without casting a vote. Ten wards. Five LGAs. A total of 6,037 people denied their democratic right through the deliberate non-deployment of conducting officials.
“Twenty-two wards. Eleven thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three registered members. Officials who fled when I was winning, and officials who never came to wards where I was strong. This was not a logistical failure. This was a strategy.
“Against that backdrop, the committee announced a result. I was given 4,868 votes. Fasuyi Cyril was given 14,179 votes.
“The ward results gave me 8,687. The declaration gave me 4,868. Three thousand, eight hundred and nineteen of my votes were removed.
“The ward results gave Cyril 7,755. The declaration gave him 14,179. Six thousand, four hundred and twenty-four votes were added to his column that were never cast by any member of this party at any ward in this district.
“3,819 votes removed from me. 6,424 votes manufactured for my opponent. This is not a recount. This is a fabrication.
“Our position, this result is rejected. Completely. Unconditionally. It does not reflect what happened in the wards of Ekiti North, it cannot be sustained by the mathematics of the registered membership, and it will not stand.
“To the APC national leadership: the party’s own constitution and the Electoral Act 2026 provide the mechanisms to correct what happened here. A candidate built on 7,526 votes that never existed and a 157 percent turnout cannot represent this party, this district, or these people”.
