Elections: Why AA’s performance is poor — Guber candidate

Mr Abdulrazaq Balogun, the Lagos Governorship Candidate of Action Alliance (AA) in March 18th governorship election, says INEC inability to take a position in the party’s national leadership crisis and conflicting court cases led to its poor outing.

Balogun, in a statement on Wednesday in Lagos, described events within the party ahead of general elections as a case of confusion and lack of direction.

“It is a clear case of deliberate confusion for members and teeming supporters of Action Alliance during the just concluded general election.

”It was occasioned by incessant dispute among the leadership of the party at the national body with multiple court cases.

“We also saw that INEC kept handling these conflicting court judgements with high level of ambiguous disposition.

“It (INEC) failed to come to the public to address its position on the party’s leadership tussle and why it has taken the stand which it took,” Balogun said.

He said that INEC was so confused that it did not know the position it would publicly take about the disputes in the party.

The candidate added: “The party was polarised and different instructions kept coming from the court recognised leadership and INEC recognised leadership of the party.

“At the end, many party loyalists became so discouraged with low morale going into an election.

“The election was to be boycotted based on the instruction emanating from one of the two factions of the leadership and the second faction publicly adopting a candidate from another political party.”

Balogun said that he was baffled by INEC’s inability to publicly make position known despite a lot of court injunctions.

According to him, the injunctions went viral on the media and gave INEC direct instructions.

“The pronounced court injunctions kept flooding the media and INEC decided to maintain status quo of its own recognised leadership without any media comment to help guide prospective voters.

“The leadership of the party needs to work more in order to get INEC to publicly unravel what is happening as it is.

“This will help us perform better during some others elections like Local Government elections and run-off elections,” he said.

Balogun said that INEC role in strengthening democracy as well as party politics should be guaranteed, saying the commission must not be seen to be endangering the democratic tenets it was set to enliven.

According to him, the issue of multiple court cases and how to best handle them needs rapt attention from all stakeholders.

“INEC has more roles to play than organising elections. It has to stand to uphold the independence associated with its name,” he said.

Balogun said that Action Alliance had one of the best visions for this country and needed to be insulated from being put in perpetual disarray as well as continuous leadership tussle immediately with INEC doing its part as early as possible.

APC’s Babajide Sanwo-Olu polled 762,134 votes to defeat his closest rival of the Labour Party, Mr Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour who scored 312,329 votes in the March 18 governorship election in Lagos State.

The PDP candidate, Dr Abdul-Azeez Adediran garnered 62,449 votes to come a distant third in the election while AA came ninth with only 904 votes.