Tinubu, Fashola planning to bribe Lagos monarchs –PDP

Tinubu and Fashola

The Peoples Democratic Party on Tuesday said it had discovered plans by the Lagos State Governor Raji Fashola and a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, to financially induce all Lagos monarchs ahead of the general elections.

The Lagos chapter of the PDP said a meeting had been scheduled to hold on Wednesday (today) where Lagos monarchs would be given money.

The meeting, according to the PDP, is at the instance of Tinubu.

But, in a reaction, the Publicity Secretary of the APC in Lagos, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said he was not aware of such a meeting.

Spokesman for the Lagos PDP, Mr. Taofeek Lawal, in a statement alleged that Tinubu and Fashola planned to move against any of the monarchs who refused to play along.

“In a carrot and stick style, any monarch who rejects the offer is to be victimised and may be deposed before Saturday,” Gani said.

The party said further that the Lagos governor had been meeting with various groups and institutions under the government control, including market leaders, transporters, investors and civil servants among others to either induce or coerce them vote for the ruling party in the state.

It said, “We have been reliably informed by our source that the state governor has scheduled to meet monarchs in the state to induce or coerce them to adopt APC. He has also deducted N6bn from local government and state government accounts to compromise about 5,000 corpers and INEC officers on the day of elections at outlined voting and collation centres.

“Some corpers have already collected the money, which the governor calls support allowance. Some honestcorpers have let us know this and that an offer of N200,000 per polling unit is planned for the Election Day by the governor who sent his lobbyists to them.”

The PDP spokesman also urged Fashola to avoid forcing the monarchs to do APC’s bidding in the March 28 and April 11 elections.

He said, “We caution governor Fashola not to victimise any monarch as he may just commit a sacrilege with spiritual consequence. On our part, we shall resist any unconventional way to defeat us in these elections. We shall resist any victimisation of our voters.

“We shall ensure that votes for PDP are cast and not compromised. We are indeed presently considering reporting Fashola to the National Human Rights Commission for violating the people’s rights to express and vote candidates of their choice.”

However, the APC said the claim was false.

“(It is) a joke, a fantasy, all noise and no substance; it is a moonlight story for the kindergarten. Please ignore Lagos PDP,” Igbokwe said.