…Governor’s Opponents Failed To Meet Screening Requirements, Disqualified Before Primaries - Electoral Cmtte

With 1,170 delegate votes in his favour, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu won the governorship primaries of Lagos State’s chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC) to become the party’s standard bearer in the 2023 general election.

The party members defied the downpour that marred the exercise held on Thursday at Mobolaji Johnson Arena in Onikan; they filed under the rain and cast their votes to approve the Governor’s second term ticket.

The electoral process commenced at 12:33pm with the arrival of the chairman of the Lagos Gubernatorial Primaries Committee led by the former Deputy Governor of Borno State, Alhaji Adamu Shettima Yuguda.

The electoral committee’s arrival was followed by immediate accreditation of delegates across the 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs).

Of all the 1,225 delegates expected to participate in the primaries, the electoral committee accredited 1,198 delegates seated at the venue.

The exercise was witnessed by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) dispatched from the commission’s headquarters to monitor the primaries.

Before voting commenced, Shettima explained the modalities adopted by the electoral committee on how the delegates would cast their ballots.

He said: “This exercise we are conducting here is to renew the mandate of the APC government in Lagos. We bring greetings from our national secretariat. Lagos is an APC state, no other party should be allowed to govern the State because our party has done extremely well.

“Lagos is very important to APC, because the next president is most likely to emerge from this State. This exercise is important, no matter how long we are here, we must be patient because this is what the electoral laws mandate.”

At 1:03pm, accredited delegates filed out to vote according to their Local Government Areas. There were five delegates each from 245 wards across the 20 federally registered LGAs.

The voting was temporarily disrupted by the downpour. When the rains subsided, the delegates came out again to vote.

At 3:35pm, the voting ended and sorting of the cast ballots began immediately. Then, the electoral committee chairman declared vote counting.

A total of 1,182 votes were cast during the primaries; 1,170 valid votes were in favour of Sanwo-Olu, while 12 votes were invalid.

Having garnered the highest votes, Shettima returned Sanwo-Olu as winner of the process, stressing that two other aspirants who were supposed to contest in the primaries had been disqualified by the party’s screen committee prior to the exercise.

Aspirant disqualified are Abdulhameed Olorunfemi Mustapha and Wale Oluwo.