Governorship candidate of the Labour Party in Saturday’s gubernatorial poll, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour (GRV) has said President-Elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s call for healing after the elections cannot happen without justice to all the alleged infractions that happened during the electoral process that is now nearing completion.
The candidate also said the party will explore all available legal options to address alleged injustices that marred the governorship and assembly polls in the state.
Recall that the governorship poll which held on Saturday, March 18 2023 was a three-horse race that had incumbent Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdul-Azeez Adediran of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and Rhodes-Vivour slug it out with each other.
At end of the contest, Governor Sanwo-Olu took the day. The Returning Officer, Prof Adenike Oladiji while declaring the results on Monday said Sanwo-Olu, polled a total of 762,134 votes to defeat his closest rival, Rhodes-Vivour who polled a total of 312,329 votes. PDP’s Adediran polled a total of 62,449 votes.
Rhodes-Vivour during a world press conference on Wednesday said his message during the campaigns was based on empathy, love, good governance devoid of the rancor.
Read full text of his address below;
“Good afternoon, Lagos, I start again by thanking Lagosians for their courage for making decisions based on hope and resisting fear. Our message was about empathy, love, good governance that is open and accountable.
“Yesterday I spent my day visiting victims of Saturdays state back terrorism and violence from Abule-Ado to Surulere, Apapa and Ikeja. I met with young men and women with bullets lodged in their body with deep cuts, fractured legs, etc.
“I reach out to you to say I am with you I feel your pain and we myself the deputy governor are by your side. We have launched the platform GRV cares 2023 and anyone who have suffered violence should upload their picture, hospital bills and police report and we will help towards offsetting these bills.
“Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu called for healing yesterday, but healing cannot happen without justice. The APC unleashed evil on Lagosian, diabolically with their fetish rites and curses during the day, and physical violence against all Lagosian, yet they want the peace of a graveyard, they want the healing of the dead.
“The thrust of my message isn’t to the evil cult organization of the APC, but it is to the indigenous Lagosian, and Lagosian at large. We cannot afford to have an agberocracy – or a military type of government that will use violence and diabolical means to create a one-party state – from Ikoyi to Ikeja to Ikorodu, we were all disenfranchised.
“They could not campaign on their past records, so they stoked ethnic strife. For the ambition of one man and his cult, the entire credibility that inec had built over the last 4 years was ripped in shreds. For the ambition of one man, we saw our traditional institutions reduced to pawns, tools, oro rites that are done at night were done during the day, invoking in broad day light the spell that Senator Tinubu and his cult have used to keep Lagos bound.
“This was no election, it was violence on multiple levels, diabolically and physically. On this ambition they sowed seeds that could potentially lead to outcome like the Rwandan genocide. Lagosian, our enemy are not our neighbors or visitors, or fellow Lagosian with diverse tongues. Our common enemy is violence, insecurity, poverty, stagnation, corruption, and underdevelopment.
It is these same people responsible for these, that have weaponized poverty and ethnicity to distract us from their evil endeavors and diabolical activities. We will never have a free and fair election under a Tinubu presidency. “They have tried to destroy years of delicately balanced ethnic relations, years or inter-marriage and friendships, years of commerce, and years of building Lagos into the economic juggernaut that it is. I call on the silent majority, decent and cultured Lagosian, indigenous Lagosian and Lagosian at large to speak out. It is enough of the worst of us defining the rest of us. On Saturday, we saw their vision for Lagos and agberocracy, and we will fight through all legal channels to birth OUR LAGOS,” the statement
