PDP says APC’s Ekiti campaign ground filled with crowd rented from Kogi

*Pointing to Gov Yahya speaking in Ebira dialect as proof

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has said that the Tuesday mega rally of All Progressives Congress (APC) for its governorship candidate in Saturday July 14 election in Ekiti State, Dr. John Kayode Fayemi, was filled largely by crowd rented from Kogi State, saying it was the reason Governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahya Bello, had to speak to the crowd in Ebira.

Although Ekiti State has a large popular of Ebira, Kogi State people to the extent that they have “Oba Ebira” and are equally the largest farmers of yam in the state like in Ondo State, the PDP said speaking to such people in such state in their language made the APC rally unreal.

The party also said that the presence of President Muhammadu Buhari at the APC mega rally worsened matters for the party and its candidate, Fayemi.

The PDP was saying this even as it had come to public knowledge how its governor in the state, Ayodele Fayose, attempted to block President Muhammadu Buhari from visiting the state.

Fayose had sent messages across to Ekiti people warning them against coming out to welcome President Buhari as his coming would lead to their being killed.

He also asked commercial transport operators in the state to bring their vehicles and okada to the Government House so that they would not work while Buhari was in town but that he would pay them in exchange for the day N10,000.

Unfortunately for the PDP’s side, it was also the same day they staged their own campaign in the state capital, which now made watchers of event suggest that it was actually the PDP that wanted to use Buhari’s visit to the state to stoke chaos in anticipation that more people will die and then they hang it on Buhari’s neck as what happened on the day he visited Ekiti.

A yet to be confirmed source said the PDP, lambasting Kogi State governor’s role in the campaign, commended Senator Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour, who, it said, advised the people of Ekiti to reject the APC candidate and endorsed the PDP-led administration of Governor Ayo Fayose.

The PDP, in a statement by Kola Ologbondiyan, its national publicity secretary, described the APC rally as a charade and mockery on the party and its candidate.

According to the umbrella Party, which at the national level only on Monday signed an MoU with 40 others to now form an alliance party, CUPP, in its bid to unseat President Buhari at all cost come 2019, the purported refusal of Ekiti people to attend the rally led to APC’s resort to renting crowd from neigbouring states.

Ekiti State was however had been like a lockdown situation beaming with life in anticipation of the President’s visit even before his Tuesday’s arrival, which, we can confirm, was sign that Ekiti State people refused to honour the order of their governor, Fayose, not to come out but which, unknown to Ologundana, became a core of its statement that people refused to attend the APC rally.

The PDP said: “Nigerians watched in amusement as even the rented crowd refused to respond to the APC slogan or brandish their brooms, for which Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State openly nagged them for ‘sleeping’ at the rally.

“In a highly embarrassing effort to spur the rented crowd, Kogi State governor, Yayaha Bello, from whose state a substantial part of the crowd was rented, had to recourse to his native Ebira language in addressing the rally.

“Moreover, President Muhammadu Buhari’s attendance worsened the woes of the APC and its candidate, as the president could not boast of any federal project in the state, but sought to beguile the people with his usual list of empty promises in his prepared hollow speech.”

But President Buhari’s listed achievements were things many of Ekiti people who reacted to the PDP’s statement told The DEFENDER are verifiable in the state, pointing to the fact that “PDP President Jonathan’s promise of development Ekiti and his use of soldiers to scare real voters away from polling boots were reasons Fayose became governor in Ekiti for these past four years.”