The contest for who represents the good people of Lagos West Senatorial District in the Red Chambers in the 10th assembly is raging with just about 13 more days to go. Segun Adewale is the Lagos West PDP Senatorial candidate for the election. He, however, has former Lagos State Deputy Governor, Idiat Adebule, to contend with for the same position. In this interview with MAYOWA SAMUEL, he explained what his chances are and how he would emerge victorious among other electoral issues. Excerpts:
Some of your party members at the national level are aggrieved about the presidential candidate and the party chairman coming from the same region, particularly the G5. How would you describe your party’s preparation towards this coming election amid this internal wrangling?
That matter is above my level, my emphasis is on Lagos State.
The national leaders will sort themselves out when the time comes. My focus is on how my election will be announced because I’ve won the election.
My closest counterpart is APC but they’re not doing anything. The other party is the Labour Party but unfortunately for them, they don’t have a candidate. So, I’ve won the election already.
The candidate of the ruling APC, Idiat Adebule, is a former deputy governor of Lagos State.
Many would predict that since she’s a well-known figure, she would definitely win the election, the reason why they may not be bothering to campaign, as you said. Don’t you see her as a stronger challenge to your candidacy?
No, she’s not. APC is not really performing, so it makes it easy for anybody to defeat APC.
They believe they’ll rig the election always. A state controlled by one political party is like a one-party state and you have over 7 million registered voters, yet they’ve never scored up to 1 million votes. That shows the elections are being rigged.
APC isn’t popular in every ramification, they major in rigging elections. They’ll bribe INEC, LASIEC, the judiciary, and police. As I’m saying this, they can also challenge me in the courts that I’m lying, I will bring evidence. Even in this coming election, there’s evidence, if you look very well, APC has taken peoples’ cards. When they’re sharing PVCs, any PVC with names that’s not synonymous with Yoruba, that PVC can’t be found. APC’s style is rigging but this time around, we’ll try and block them.
Lagos INEC said 87.8 per cent of PVCs in the state have been collected. How does your allegation hold water?
Even from the 87 per cent that’s been collected, how are we sure they were collected by the real owners? Some people find their way into INEC offices despite all INEC’s efforts, they collect PVCs that aren’t theirs. I don’t have any tough opponent, maybe if I’m contesting against Asiwaju, I’ll know that’s a strong opponent because he has billions and he can waste it on anything. I don’t have any opposition. The Labour Party would’ve been the main opposition but fortunately for me, they have no candidate.
How would you describe the performance of the incumbent, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, alias Yayi?
What’s my own with Adeola? Someone that stole my election in 2011? In 2015, Tinubu gave it to him.What performance?
Two weeks ago, the MC Oluomo led Parks Management Committee asked INEC to allow them to transport sensitive materials. Apparently, the request was granted, as the Lagos REC, Olusegun Agbaje on Tuesday clarified that the electoral body is only working with park managers and not MC Oluomo who is an APC member. Your presidential candidate and many others have called for the Lagos REC’s removal over the move. What’s your submission regarding the collaboration between INEC and the MC Oluomo-led park managers?
I have absolute confidence in the REC and his people. I’m sure that man, if you check his background, doesn’t tolerate nonsense.
MC Oluomo is also trying to play politics. I’ll look into that, because they’re supposed to have a neutral alternative. I will call the REC, I was with him and tabled before him some of the challenges we’re having, like people complaining about a lady who’s the wife of the current state APC Chairman but the REC told me that for peace to reign and for benefit of the doubt, that the woman had been changed, not because a woman is actually the wife of the state APC chairman but because he has a listening ear, that’s why he removed her.
PDP hasn’t been able to get to the seat of power in Alausa since the return of democracy in 1999. How certain are you that it’ll be a different story this time?
This election is gone, we’ve won this election already, and we just want to make sure that we get honest people at the collation centre and at the polling unit.
Whether we campaign or not, nobody wants to vote for APC. There’s poverty, and a lot of people are complaining of hunger, people can now compare PDP and APC.
Jandor will win this election easily, he came into the PDP at the right time, definitely, Sanwo-Olu will have serious challenges in winning the election, except if they rig but if they want to count votes now, there’s no way it will be possible for APC to defeat PDP because generally, people have apathy.
A lot of people have registered, all we need to do is to harvest those people. Those new people who have registered will either vote for PDP or Labour, not APC.
Votes for APC will come from their people in Alausa, the people eating and taking money from this government, that’s Agbero people, Iyaolojas, that’s all. Average elite will either vote Labour or PDP but why PDP will win easily is because what is driving Labour? It’s Obi.
By February 25, if Obi doesn’t win this election, a lot of them will leave, a lot of people won’t be ready to vote for Labour anymore.
Then, it will be PDP vs APC because a lot of them would be disappointed.
They believe it’s either Obi or noth ng, so Labour will have a problem, and the momentum will drop immediately.
What’s your level of confidence in BVAS?
BVAS and the old system are the same, the only difference is that when you go to court, they can print out what’s inside the BVAS. But by INEC not allowing BVAS to print out on election day, it gives room for rigging.
Why will BVAS have no space to print out results? Even POS prints receipts immediately, but in this case, you can’t print them out, that’s another room for rigging.
Somebody can declare the wrong person as the winner, and you’ll have to go to court to claim your mandate, but if you don’t have billions to bribe the judge, you might have problems, because results are collated manually. Results are in the BVAS but it is collated by paper.
They’ll rig at the polling booth, ward, local government and Senatorial. Even though INEC is against it but INEC is not the ad-hoc officer, they recruited them, INEC can’t be at all the polling units. INEC doesn’t have thousands of staff in Lagos. So, they contracted the job to outsiders. The BVAS will have the total number of accreditation of voters, the people that voted, and voided votes, they’ll now transfer that information into form EC8A manually. Is that not rigging?
Sanwo-Olu has been Lagos governor since 2019, how would you rate his performance so far?
Below average, I won’t say woefully. In my constituency in Alimosho, there’s nothing there, that’s Agege, apart from what Ambode did, there’s no new road, the roads are bad.
Common street sign to show this is Abeokuta expressway or Johnson street. I’m just giving you the least, which is that Common Street signs are not there.
I’ve constructed more boreholes than Sanwo-Olu and the LCDAs have done. I’ve done over 60 boreholes in the community, I’ve dredged a canal in that same community, I’ve built a school in that same community, and I’ve given a transformer to that same community.
I’m not seeing anything Sanwo-Olu has done. Maybe if you talk about V.I, Ikoyi, I’ve seen new roads, bridges coming up there but here, I’m not seeing anything. The last one they commissioned was a bridge that Sanwo-Olu built at Pen Cinema. Maybe because he commissioned those bridges, but he hasn’t really done anything in my own area up to Badagry, there’s nothing there, even in Ojo, some streets are like you’re living in the village, there’s nothing. There are some communities where I was the one who gave the road.
The emphasis of Sanwo-Olu is to give more to areas where they pay more tax or revenue, than the areas where poor people are living. But when it’s time for the election, it’s the same poor people that’ll deliver for him in Alimosho, Ifako-Ijaiye, there’s nothing new in these four years.
This is despite Alimosho being one of the constituencies with the highest number of voters in the state?
Alimosho alone has a total of about 1,700 polling units, more than some states.
Our children are on the streets, and most of them are dropouts. In fact, in this area, people don’t go up to SS1 or SS3, the highest is JSS. If you’re talking about the area with the most populated gangs, it’s Alimosho, Oshodi, Agege, Mushin, the boys are around 18, 21, and 23, a lot of these boys were born on the streets, and grew up on the streets and are still on the streets but nobody is doing anything about it. It’s even worse in Agege where you can be on Okada, an area boy will stop you and collect your phone, not at night but during day time, a lot of things have gone wrong. Instead of empowering youths to go to school, and learn a trade, what they do is they give them a garage, that’s their empowerment. It’s so sad. Because of all these, they won’t win the election, people are just angry.
How do you see the chances of your presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar against the other three major contenders, Bola Tinubu, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso?
Peter Obi was my leader, I couldn’t join him in Labour. He was my leader because we had people pushing for a Southern presidency but that doesn’t translate to becoming president for now. The six or seven months are too sudden for him to become president, except through maybe revolution. But if it’s by democracy, it’ll take time to convince people because if you look at the supporters’ base of Obi, they’re elites, students, some Christians, and then the South East because they’ve been marginalised.
If you look at the majority of northerners, they’re going to vote in a bloc for Atiku, game over. Atiku will share votes in the South West, Atiku will share votes with Obi in the South East. I think we’ll win part of the South South. Obi will win mainly in the city centers but in the villages where poverty is a norm, just give it to Atiku and Tinubu. Elections take billions of naira, planning, execution, it is money, that’s why you see the Obi that can’t give shishi, is also packaging rice, garri, beans.
Our election isn’t ripe yet for people like Obi to be president, it’ll take time, but if they can sustain this momentum, maybe probably by the Year 2031.
The power will be in the north, all things being equal, for eight years. The power will then return to the south. If by then, Obi returns to PDP, they won’t give him because people are angry. This is because he has successfully divided our votes unnecessarily.
He’s going to make us struggle in Lagos because, for people like us contesting for senate, we’re going to struggle because 90 per cent of Obi’s bases are PDP extraction, so our people will just vote blindly. He’s dividing our vote for APC. Obi, essentially, is the one that gave Asiwaju the momentum. If there was no Obi, there would’ve been no Labour.
If Obi had remained VP to Atiku, by now, the game would’ve been over. Obi has been the one dividing us, Obi has taken a chunk of our votes in the South East and probably in the North Central where we have Christians.
You don’t think Tinubu stands a chance?
Tinubu has no better chance, but he (Obi) gave Tinubu the opportunity to be in the race, not to win because, in the South-South, there’s no way Tinubu or Obi will win us in Bayelsa, Akwa-Ibom, Delta. The only place we can be dragging it is Rivers State because our leader Wike doesn’t want Atiku.
