….Seeks President Tinubu, APC intervention
- By Demola Atobaba, Ado-Ekiti
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress and an aspirant in the senatorial primary election for Ekiti North Senatorial District, Senator Sylvester Ayodele Arise, has rejected the results of the primary election held on Monday and that there would be maximum consequences following the declaration of the election’s results which he described fraudulent and not a proper representation of the constituents.
Recall that the returning officer for the senatorial primary election in Ekiti State, Asipa Wasiu declared that the incumbent lawmaker, Senator Cyril Fasuyi polled 14,179 votes to secure his ticket while Senator Ayo Arise came second with 4,868 votes.
Senator Arise in a press briefing with newsmen at his home town Oye-Ekiti on Tuesday, positioned that he won the election with 8,687 votes while the sitting Senator polled 7,755 votes.
His words: “I won the APC Ekiti North Senatorial Primary yesterday. That is the fact on which everything I say today rests. Not an allegation. Not a claim. A fact confirmed by the votes of our party members in ward after ward across this senatorial district.
“What was subsequently announced by the committee is not the result of this primary. It is the replacement of that result with a set of figures that did not come from the wards, cannot be reconciled with the registered membership of this party, and are disproved by arithmetic so clear that no honest person can look at them and call what happened an election.
Arise who seeks the true and authentic results of the primary election hinted that he has everything that happened well kept and it will be presented for all to see at the appropriate time. “Let me tell you what happened at the ward level – because the wards are the only place this primary was ever real.
“In thirty-three wards that completed their counting and reporting process, I led this primary with 8,687 votes-48.1 percent of the total votes cast. My opponent, Fasuyi Cyril, was in second position with 7.755 votes. The total votes cast across those thirty-three wards was 18,051, representing a 64.3 percent turnout. Those are the ward results. They are captured in our live monitoring system, corroborated by agents present at every ward table, and they exist.
“In every ward that completed its process, I was winning. My lead was 932 votes and growing.
“In twelve further wards, the party officials conducting the election waited until it was clear that I was winning – and then they abandoned their posts. They walked away mid-process. They left our members standing at the polling tables with no one to administer the count. Those twelve wards – spread across all five LGAs of this district – hold 5,756 registered members whose votes were sabotaged the moment the tally turned in my favour.
Senator Arise continue by saying, “In ten other wards, party officials never came at all. Our members 6,037 registered party men and women- queued from early morning. They waited. No one arrived. They went home without casting a vote. Ten wards. Five LGAs. A total of 6,037 people denied their democratic right through the deliberate non-deployment of conducting officials.
“Twenty-two wards. Eleven thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three registered members. Officials who fled when I was winning, and officials who never came to wards where I was strong. This was not a logistical failure. This was a strategy.
“Against that backdrop, the committee announced a result. I was given 4,868 votes. Fasuyi Cyril was given 14,179 votes.
He frowned at the results made available to the public that it was not the true reflection of what happened at each wards. “The ward results gave me 8,687. The declaration gave me 4,868. Three thousand, eight hundred and nineteen of my votes were removed.
“The ward results gave Cyril 7,755. The declaration gave him 14,179. Six thousand, four hundred and twenty-four votes were added to his column that were never cast by any member of this party at any ward in this district.
According to him, “3,819 votes removed from me. 6,424 votes manufactured for my opponent. This is not a recount. This is a fabrication.
“The four declared totals – Cyril’s 14,179, my 4,868, Dipo Bamisaye’s 3,694, and Dare Owolabi’s 2,836 add up to 25,577 votes. The thirty-three wards that actually reported their results gave us 18,051 total votes. The declaration contains 7.526 votes that no ward ever produced.
“I want to address the arithmetic once, firmly, and finally, because it puts this matter beyond any reasonable dispute.
He noted that what was made available as the overall result was outrighlty different from the original updates. “The total registered membership of this party across all fifty-six wards of Ekiti North is 28,058 members. That is the ceiling. No legitimate election in this district can produce more votes than that number.
“Of those fifty-six wards, twelve had their officials abscond when I was winning. Ten had no officials at all. That leaves thirty-four wards the only wards where an election actually took place. Those thirty-four wards have a combined registered membership of 16,265 members.
“The declaration claims 25,577 total votes from wards with 16,265 registered members. That is a 157 percent turnout. It is not possible. It has never happened. It did not happen yesterday.
According to Senator Arise, “One hundred and fifty-seven percent. More than one and a half votes for every single registered member in every ward that voted. The committee did not produce a result from the wards. They built a result using votes from the twenty-two wards where the process was shut down – votes that do not exist because elections did not happen there.
“Here is the final number. The 7,526 votes that were inserted into the declared result above what the wards actually produced – those 7,526 phantom votes are eighty point eight percent of Cyril Fasuyi’s entire declared winning margin of 9,311 votes. His margin exists only because of votes that were never cast. Take out what was never cast, and there is no margin. There is no victory. There is nothing.
“The evidence is not theoretical. It is ward-by-ward, captured in real time, corroborated by the agents we had on the ground at every ward, and backed by the arithmetic of the registered membership itself.
“In Iludun I ward, Ilejemeje, the count was completed. Our agents witnessed it. The tally was: 375 votes for me, 235 for Cyril. I won that ward. The figure entered into the official result was 180 for me and 270 for Cyril. In a single ward, 195 of my votes were deleted and the result was reversed. The same ward’s declared total of 456 votes exceeds its registered membership of 200 members a 228 percent turnout. Those agents are here. Their affidavits are being filed today.
“In Odo Ayedun and Ayebode ward, Ikole, the declared result records 803 votes against 344 registered members-233 percent of the entire membership. One candidate alone received 295 votes in a ward with 344 members. Two hundred and ninety-five out of three hundred and forty-four members voted for one person. That does not happen in any election anywhere.
Arise further explained that, “Across eighteen wards in this district, the declared votes exceed the registered membership. The total excess is 3,366 votes that came from nowhere and seventy-seven percent of those excess votes, 2,605 of them, were placed in wards where Cyril was declared the winner. That is not coincidence. That is the mechanism.
“Our position, rhis result is rejected. Completely. Unconditionally. It does not reflect what happened in the wards of Ekiti North, it cannot be sustained by the mathematics of the registered membership, and it will not stand.
“To the APC national leadership: the party’s own constitution and the Electoral Act 2026 provide the mechanisms to correct what happened here. A candidate built on 7,526 votes that never existed and a 157 percent turnout cannot represent this party, this district, or these people”, Senator Arise concluded.
