APC clears chairmanship, councillorship seats in Ekiti council poll

Women push for better representation in politics

The Ekiti State All Progressives Congress (APC) has swept all the 35 available chairmanship seats and 176 out of the 177 councillorship seats in Saturday’s local council elections held in the state.

The elections were held across the 16 local councils and the 19 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) as well as the 177 wards in the state.

The main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, had boycotted the election, claiming that the APC was incapable of organising any free and fair election. Declaring the results yesterday, Chairman of the state’s Independent Electoral Commission, Justice Jide Aladejana, said the APC won 176 out of the 177 councillorship seats available in the state.

Aladejana said the councillorship election in Erinjiyan ward had been postponed due to alleged violence that broke out during the poll in the town.

MEANWHILE, the state chapter of the PDP has discredited the exercise. The state Publicity Secretary of the party, Raphael Adeyanju, in a statement in Ado-Ekiti, yesterday, claimed that the results of the election and the obvious low turnout of voters had confirmed the opposition’s fear that the result had been pre-determined by the ruling party.

The PDP also alleged that Governor Kayode Fayemi has a penchant for creating LCDAs when his party is about to lose gubernatorial election.

In another development, some prominent Nigerian women have urged major political parties and stakeholders to ensure more women participation in elective and non-elective positions as the 2023 general elections is fast-approaching.

The women, who spoke under the auspices of Womanifesto Dialogue 2021 in Lagos, said there was need to restructure the current political system in Nigeria to accommodate more gender participation if the country must progress and develop.

A lawmaker, representing Ekiti South Senatorial District, Abiodun Olujimi, who stated this at a programme with the theme: “Connecting Voices for Transformation Leadership – 2023 Agenda,” held at University of Lagos, said if the vision of women for more participation in politics must be realised, more women at various level of professional and non-professional bodies must embrace and support the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill (GOB) currently before the National Assembly.

She said women could not continue to discuss the recommendations made at the Beijing Conference for more women participation in politics since 1995 without taking cogent and concrete steps to actualise them.