TheCable

John Oyegun, national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), jocularly told journalists on Wednesday that he was ready to get his own share of financial inducement of voters participating in the Edo state governorship election.

There have been reports of voting in exchange for money — TheCable witnessed one — although it was not immediately clear which political party was responsible.

Addressing reporters after casting his ballot at Ward 2, Unit 1, Staff Training Center, Okada Avenue, Benin, Oyegun said it would be difficult to identify those bribing voters.

“When you look at a place like this, you don’t know who has been given money or who has not,” he said.

“How do you know that somebody has been given money? The way it is, nobody will know who you voted for. Please, is there somebody sharing money, let me go there and collect my own.”

He described the turnout as very impressive, saying “it is a sign that something good is about to happen”.

“I have always voted here, and this is the best turnout that I have ever seen,” he said.

“This is even the largest number of journalists that I will address in this place. This presumes that something good is about to happen.

“People are keen to express their civic rights and this shows that democracy has become widespread. It’s a very good development. It has been peaceful so far; I have been monitoring on the television.

“The security arrangement has been absolute. As the national chairman of the party, the issue of security has been of great concern to us and all the security agencies gave us the assurance that there would be no incident, at least no major incident.”

The exercise is going on smoothly across the state. Voters started trooping to their polling units as early as 6:30am, and the electoral officials arrived in time.

By the arrangement of the Independent National Electoral Commission, voting will stop at 2pm.