Date: 2013-09-05

APC Chairmanship candidate in the Offa rerun poll Prince Saheed Popoola on Thursday dismissed as a "belated face-saving measure" the PDP's denial of Mr Afolabi Jimoh Olawole as its councillorship candidate for the Sawo South West Ward.

In a statement in Offa on Thursday, Popoola asked the PDP to tell whether Olawole's name was not the one that the KWASIEC displayed as the PDP candidate for the ward ahead of the ballot. He also challenged the PDP to tell the the world if Olawole was not the PDP candidate who took ACN's Adefioye Kayode to court on the strenght of which the latter's election was nullified.

Popoola accompanied his statement with scanned copies each of the list of PDP's candidates for the poll and a court paper , dated February 22, 2011, showing Olawole as the appellant who dragged ACN's Kayode to the election petition tribunal.

The statement reads: "Our attention has been drawn to a face-saving attempt by the PDP and Kwara State Government to disown their councillorship candidate who - out of patriotism and sincerity owned up to the fraud perpetrated by KWASIEC and PDP - said the APC actually won the Offa rerun in his ward - name of the ward.

"The PDP is making two funny and almost conflicting claims: one, that the fellow is not their candidate in the election and so the issue of him disowning the result does not arise; and, two, that he had since defected to the APC and so had been replaced. A governor's spokesman Femi Akorede made some of these laughable claims on Channels TV this morning. We take it that he was totally ignorant of the issues involved. Also, we are used to his routine lies!

"Both claims regarding the candidate are against common sense - which is not common anyways!

"We ask the PDP to answer these posers: whose name did the KWASIEC display as the PDP candidate for the ward? Anybody who has seen the list of PDP councillorship candidates will see that Mr Afolabi Adewole Jimoh was conspicuously listed as the councillorship candidate for Sawo South West Ward. He is number six (6) on the list.

"Also, can PDP change candidate for a rerun election? Is that allowed under the law, except in the event of death and maybe voluntary stepping down of that candidate which he must communicate to the electoral body? The answer of course is No!

"For the avoidance of doubt, we approached the KWASIEC to change one of our councillorship candidates and the answer was an emphatic no. May we also put it on record that our party demanded and got the list of the candidates for the election, inclduing the list for PDP, just to be on the side of caution.

"Also, we enjoin any interested member of the public and the media to call for the court paper the PDP filed, dated February 22, 2011, challenging the result of Sawo South West ward and see if Mr Jimoh was not the applicant who sued our candidate Adefioye Kayode. We made this point to counter the rubbish that Mr Jimoh was not part of the litigation that led to the court judgment.

"Finally, we are surprised that, five days after the election was held, all the KWASIEC has done on radio was to announce a blanket result without telling us who scored what from what ward and so on. We call on the KWASC to immediately release the breakdown of its bogus result, which, we will definitely challenge in court."