A member of the Obidient Elders Council and Labour Party chieftain in Delta State, Delly Ajufo, has said that the party actually won both the presidential and governorship elections in the state in 2023.
Results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for the presidential election indicated that the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 45,074 votes, LP 160,123, the New Nigerian Peoples Party, NNPP, 1,118 votes, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, 67,567 votes.
When collation was completed for the governorship election in the state on March 20, INEC declared the PDP as the victor, with official totals showing 360,000 votes for the party. The APC came second with around 240,000 votes, while the Labour Party scored just over 48,000 votes.
Speaking on Arise News, Ajufo said, “The tsunami that greeted the presidential election in Delta State was unprecedented for Labour Party, and some of us, including myself, were offered humongous sums of money, something I’ve never seen in my life, to support the ruling party, the PDP. I rejected it on principle, and during the collation, our people were thoroughly brutalized.
“We have figures to show that in Delta State, Labour Party won the election at both the governorship and presidential levels. It was also attested to by the former deputy Chairman of APC South South during his interview or discussion with Dr. Pat Utomi recently on the radio station. So this idea of allotting numbers to political parties, we accepted it because we weren’t ready for it. We did not expect the kind of shenanigans that went on during the election. We’re better prepared now.”
On recent defections of politicians in Delta State, he added, “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying basically. We have harlots of Jericho in Delta State—harlots of Jericho, people who will use their positions to invite foreigners to invade them and occupy the territory. But we know better. They are protecting their loot.
“Delta State, over the past few years of democracy, has been bedeviled by inept leadership. We all know it, and we’ve been crying out. Unfortunately, we have a situation where there’s hunger in the land, and it has been weaponized.
“We are trying as much as possible to let the people know that despite these defections, their lot will not be better if they keep following those characters that I call harlots of Jericho. It’s not going to affect anything.
“There will be a serious implosion [in the APC]. Look at the characters that have defected for personal interest, all of them, without exception.
“If you talk about Delta North, it will be worse, because those defecting are all gone for the same positions. I wonder how it’s going to pan out.
“So let them go. We are waiting for them. It’s not going to affect anything.”
