Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has said that the All Progressives Congress (APC) was surprised by Labour Party (LP) Peter Obi’s win in Lagos State during the Presidential election.
Gatekeepers News reports that while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Fashola said the Labour Party turned its voters on in Lagos and decimated the chances of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The Former Lagos state Governor also said his party, the APC conducted pre-election internal polls but never released it, describing polls that predicted victory for Obi and Atiku as “badly conducted”.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria said his party knew states where it had high chances of winning and had concentrated its energy in those states but were however blindsided in some cases. “In some cases, you get blindsided. We were blindsided in Lagos because the opposition turned out their voters there,” he said.
“And you also saw that a party that has been competitive for 24 years, the umbrella party, suddenly disappeared. It showed that their support base has shifted.”
Asked whether LP’s victory in Lagos at the presidential poll surprised the APC, he said, “Yeah, blindsided us, without a doubt. They turned out their voters and in the subsequent gubernatorial election, we turned out our voters.”
At the February 25 poll, Obi polled 582,454 votes to defeat Tinubu, also a former Lagos State governor who scored 572,606 votes. However, Tinubu won the highest total votes in the election and was declared winner by the electoral umpire.
Though the LP won during the presidential election, the party’s candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour lost to APC’s Babajide Sanwo-Olu who secured a reelection in the March 18 governorship poll.
Sanwo-Olu polled a total of 762,134 votes, defeating Rhodes-Vivour, who scored 312,329 votes, followed by PDP’s Abdul-Azeez Adediran aka Jandor with 62,449 votes.
