APC won chairmanship, councillorship seats in Ekiti council election

In Saturday’s local council elections in Ekiti State, the All Progressives Congress (APC) captured all 35 open chairperson seats and 176 out of 177 councillorship seats.

The elections took place across the state’s 16 local councils, 19 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs), and 177 wards.

The People’s Democratic Party, the largest opposition party, boycotted the poll, arguing that the APC was incapable of holding a free and fair election. Justice Jide Aladejana, Chairman of the state’s Independent Electoral Commission, announced the results yesterday, saying the APC had won 176 of the 177 councillorship seats available in the state.

According to Aladejana, the councillorship election in Erinjiyan ward was postponed due to suspected violence in the town during the voting.

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Meanwhile, the PDP’s state chapter has slammed the practise. In a statement issued yesterday in Ado-Ekiti, the party’s state publicity secretary, Raphael Adeyanju, stated that the election results and the clear low voter participation had verified the opposition’s suspicion that the outcome had been pre-determined by the ruling party.

The PDP also claimed that anytime his party is set to lose a gubernatorial election, Governor Kayode Fayemi has a habit of forming LCDAs.

In another incident, some notable Nigerian women have asked major political parties and stakeholders to guarantee that more women participate in elective and non-elective posts in the run-up to the 2023 general elections.

The ladies, speaking at the Womanifesto Dialogue 2021 in Lagos, argued that if Nigeria is to continue and flourish, the present political system must be restructured to include more gender participation.

Abiodun Olujimi, a lawmaker representing Ekiti South Senatorial District, stated this at a University of Lagos event titled “Connecting Voices for Transformation Leadership – 2023 Agenda,” saying that if women’s vision of greater political participation is to be realised, more women at various levels of professional and non-professional bodies must embrace and support the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill (GOB) currently before the National Assembly.

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She stated that women could not continue to discuss the proposals made at the Beijing Conference in 1995 for increased female participation in politics without taking concrete actions to make them a reality.