Presidential Election Won't Affect Other Election- Seyi Makinde

Barely a week to the 28th March presidential election, one of the governorship candidates in Oyo State and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) flag-bearer, Seyi Makinde has described as erroneous the insinuation that the presidential election result would determine the winner of the governorship election in the state.

Speaking against the backdrop of the usual bandwagon effect that whichever party wins the presidential election will automatically win the governorship election in the state, the SDP flag-bearer said his experience on the field during his campaign had shown otherwise.

He stated this while fielding questions from the European Election Observer Mission Nigeria 2015 led by Rumiana Deceva, a Bulgarian which visited his Ikolaba, Ibadan residence as part of the team’s meeting with the governorship candidates in the state.

According to him, “field experience has shown that the presidential election would be treated differently from the local elections. The concern of the people as expressed during our campaign has been about who would be their governor, their representatives at both the National and State lawmaking chambers”.

Makinde equally dismissed with a wave of hand the carrot of state creation being dangled before the people of the state as the fall out of the last National Conference and the reason why the people should vote for a particular candidate, saying “the generality of the people are not excited about it.

“This is because the previous state creations had not removed poverty from their lives and the one being promised is not likely to be different. So, what the people are concerned about is something new that can change their life pattern for good, the agent of which we are”, he added.

The SDP standard-bearer assured the EU Observers that he had no problem with the electoral agency, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with the way it had handled the electoral process so far, adding, “the activities of the agency had not been without hitches here and there, but, we are positive because there can’t be flawless system.

“Even in the advanced democracies, they have their challenges, so, we understand that there can’t be a perfect system, but, our demand has always been to let there be transparency, give to the people what they demand for in terms of leadership and in case of any challenge, all the stakeholders should be made to know”, he stated further.

He assured the EU Observers of the readiness of his party to see the results of the election from the polling booth to the final collation centre to ensure there’s no shortchanging, stressing that his agents would be at all the 5,620 voting centres across the state.

Decheva, the Long Term Observer, who led Uros Rustia on the mission disclosed that the team had been in and out of the country since last year and maintained that all what her team would do in the country would be based on the country’s electoral law and not to compare Nigeria’s election with that of any other country.