From Bamigbola Gbolagunte, Akure
Some political parties, under the auspices of the Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC), in Osun State have expressed their decision to boycott the planned local government election in the state.
Osun State Independent Electoral Commission (OSIEC) had fixed local government elections in the state for February 2024.
But IPAC at a press conference, yesterday, declared all the political parties that make up the council will boycott the election, alleging that OSIEC Chairman, Hassim Abioye, is a card-carrying member of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.
IPAC chairman in the state, Victor Akande, alleged that the OSIEC chairman was doing everything possible to favour the PDP in the forthcoming local government election.
He listed the political parties involved in the decision to include Action Alliance, African Democratic Congress, Accord Party, Social Democratic Party, African Action Congress, New
Nigeria Peoples Party, Allied Peoples Party and the Peoples Redemption Party.
Others are All Progressives Grand Alliance, Zenith Labour Party, Action Democratic Party, Action Peoples Party, Labour Party, Boot Party, National Rescue Movement and Young Peoples Party.
“When Governor Ademola Adeleke submitted the name of a card-carrying member of his party, PDP, Hassim Abioye, to the rubber-stamped House of Assembly for confirmation as the chairman, OSIEC in November 2023, we vehemently kicked against it.
“Our position then, as Osun chapter of IPAC, was that Abioye is not legally fit to conduct free, fair and credible local government election in Osun State. We opposed the brazen imposition of Abioye as OSIEC umpire as he was Adeleke’s senior special assistant on Legal Matters then.
“We have reliably gathered that Abioye has perfected plans to use PDP members as electoral officers during the election which we all know what it means.
“Abioye’s intention is to trap us into conducting our parties’ primary elections without disclosing the amount each party will pay which will, of course, lead to efforts in futility after announcing exorbitant fees.
“We expected up to date information from Abioye as has been done by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) but the reverse is the case as we always have information about the Osun local government election from PDP. We found it convenient to say the PDP-led administration in the state is intentionally creating avenues for crisis all over so as to scare our people away from the forthcoming council election as only a secured mind will have courage of going out to vote for his/her choice,” he said.