Biodun Sowunmi Wrote about Ekiti Election

I was in Ekiti State to monitor the election. One undisputed fact is that APC leaders in each town, local government areas, and the State executives were either arrested or driven underground by the security forces led by Musiliu Obanikoro, Minister of State for Defence and Adeshiyan, Minister of Police Affairs. Journalists and observers were harassed, arrested, and the Osun Broadcasting Corporation 4-man crew were deported to Ora a border town with Kwara State on the flimsy excuse that they conducted an interview with Chief Segun ONI in his Ifaki home. Many people who were not journalists were arrested in most hotels in Ado-Ekiti. Not one person has been paraded as a thug.


When I learnt of the storming of EMAX hotel Ado-Ekiti from a female reporter, I drove down to the hotel in the night and met soldiers harassing occupants of the hotel. 6 people were made to sit on bare floor. A man who claimed he visited the hotel to eat was taken away to identify his residence. No one in the hotel ever saw him again.

APC raises the alarm over Ekiti election, says clampdown on media part of strategy to capture state

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has raised the alarm on the desperation of the PDP-led federal government to capture Ekiti State at all cost, saying the ongoing clampdown on the national media is part of a grand strategy to silence Nigerians ahead of the satanic plan to thwart the will of the people of Ekiti and indeed that of all Nigerians.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the multi-pronged approach started with the harassment and intimidation of the people of Ekiti to prevent them from coming out to vote on 21 June.

''The pre-meditated violence inflicted on innocent and harmless Ekiti people last Sunday by the police, which has now turned itself to PDP enforcers, is aimed clearly at signalling to the people of the state what they should expect before, during and after the forthcoming election,'' it said