The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos State during the last election, Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor, has expressed satisfaction over the ongoing case he instituted at the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in Lagos State against the candidates of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) Babajide Sanwolu and Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the Labour Party (LP).

Jandor shared with the Punch Newspaper his thoughts on some issues that played out during the election, after the election and governance in the state in an exclusive interview published on Sunday.

Whene asked why he decided to challenge the outcome of the election despite coming third, he said, “Of course, our case is rooted in both the fact and the law. The good thing about it is that there have been several authorities on the majority of our grounds for seeking redress.

“Every political party needs to know that an election is a process and not an event. The process that leads to one also leads to another in completing the process. A political party must be seen to have carried out the dictates of the Electoral Act and the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, including the party’s own guidelines.

“Anything short of that will definitely affect the next process, which means you can’t build something on nothing. So, what we have presented before the tribunal is the issue of invalid sponsorship of the candidates of both the Labour Party and All Progressives Congress as supported by several sections of the Electoral Act and our prayer is also supported by a section of the Electoral Act.

“For a lot of people, what they see is that maybe somebody came first and two other persons came second and third but the law doesn’t deal with emotions. It is clearly stated in the law that if you have gone on the wrong side, there will be a penalty. We have started our case and they would also open their defence. It’s a process,” he added.

He further stressed, “Everybody knew what happened during the election. They knew that they harassed people and allegedly went to write the results somewhere and that was why they wrote 64,000 for the work we did. We were surprised. They compromised everything and decided to put such results out but again they thought they were burying us.

“They never knew we had something against them that would make us resurrect and that is what we are doing now. We know the judiciary really wants to make a statement and really want to do the needful”, he said.

When asked why his party lose the election, Jandor said, “ We didn’t lose the election, and that is why we are still here. That is why we did not even challenge INEC for that election. We are focused on the qualification of the candidates from the two parties. We are not concerned about figures declared because the figures given to them will end up being wasted votes the moment the disqualification is pronounced and then the highest number of votes will be our votes.”

Explaining why he failed to form an alliance with the governorship candidate of the Labour Party, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, to have a better chance against the incumbent, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, he said, “Yes, there was a call during that election that we should form an alliance. For me, I really did not have any issue with us forming an alliance and I said it then.

“What I said was that in forming an alliance, we would have to find a way of putting our best foot forward, and if you take the candidacy of the Labour Party candidate side by side with ours, we said his candidacy had issues. His sponsorship was an issue whereas there was no issue with mine.

“That is why Labour Party’s petition against the APC is querying the qualification of Sanwo-Olu and Hamzat as candidates, while the APC, in responding to LP’s petition, is also querying the sponsorship of Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour and the party, that they do not even have any cause to challenge them because he (Rhodes-Vivour) was not qualified to contest.

“Our petition queried the qualification of both the LP and APC candidates because it’s one petition and we have about six respondents in it. All of them are mentioned in our petition as respondents and what has played out so far has vindicated us. It is only the PDP candidate they have nothing against”, he added.

Starnews Nigeria reports that Jandor who is confident of the outcome of the case he filed at the Tribunal was also of the opinion that the Tribunal verdict will expose PDP members who worked against him.