10th May, 2017
A member of the House of Representatives representing Agege Federal Constituency, Taofiq Adaranijo on Wednesday dismissed rigging allegation leveled against the Chairman of the Lagos State All Progressives Congress (APC) Councillorship and Chairmanship Aspirants Screening Committee, Professor Tunde Samuel and other party leaders.
Adaranijo, who was among those alleged to be planning to rig the party election to select candidates in Agege Local Government and Orile-Agege Local Council Development Area (LCDA) for the forthcoming Local Government Election, in a statement, described the allegation as pure lies concocted by anti-democratic elements who are afraid of standing for the primaries.
APC Financial Secretary in Agege, Haruna Yusuf and one Alhaji Logunleko, an LG officer of the party in Orile-Agege, had accused Adaranijo, former Lagos State Commissioner for Transport, Kayode Opeifa; former Agege LG Chairman, Alh. Jubril Kareem and Prof. Samuel, of working on strategies to perpetrate electoral fraud in favour of their candidates.
Yusuf and Logunleko had specifically alleged that the party leaders were perfecting plans to recruit street urchins from Oshodi, Mushin, and Sango in Ogun State to foment trouble, intimidate eligible delegates and disrupt the primaries.
But reacting to the allegations, Adaranijo said apart from the fact that there was no iota of truth in the allegations, the contents of such vituperation was a pointer to sinister plan being orchestrated by those raising the allegations.
“Ordinarily, we would have ignored the allegations but for our teeming supporters and lovers of democracy who may be scared to come out to express their franchise on election day. We wish to categorically deny the allegation and state that there is no iota of truth in it.
“Everybody in Lagos know that we are peace lovers. This is not the first time we are standing for election. Personally, I have contested and won elections as Councilor, Vice Chairman, Chairman and now House of Representatives. We are not hooligans and everybody is well aware of that fact.
“We want people and especially our party leaders to take note of the fact that those raising the allegations are actually revealing their plans and want to use that as a cover-up. If anything of such should happen, they should rather be held responsible,” Adaranijo said.