The Lagos state Governorship candidate in last weekend’s election, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour has lamented the level of violence that greeted the polls in Lagos, especially with lives lost and many still receiving treatment at various hospitals in the state. He said, the widespread violence shows clearly that the people were not allowed to willingly choose their governor.
Rhodes-Vivour, while addressing a World Press Conference at his Lekki campaign office, reacted to the call by the President-elect, Bola Tinubu for a healing process. The Labour Party candidate said there can’t be any true healing until justice is seen to be done, over the needless killings and maiming of opposition party members and supporters including non-Yoruba residents of the state.
His words: “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.”
The governorship candidate also narrated how he has been going round the state to condole with bereaved families and injured citizens receiving treatment at the hospital.
“Yesterday I spent my day visiting victims of Saturdays state back terrorism and violence from Abuleado 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.” He said.
While announcing the creation of a platform to collate evidences of those who might have suffered one form of violence or the other during the election, GRV as he’s fondly called, promised more help for people in that category.
“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 offset these bills.”
He lashed out at the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for allegedly unleashing terror on a state they lead, in panic of losing the election because of poor performance.
He argued that what happened last weekend was not an election.
“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.” He said
Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour came second in last Saturday’s election polling a total of 312,329 votes, coming after the incumbent governor Babajide Sanwoolu who had a total of 762,134 to win another four-year term in office
