Udengs Eradiri Says Votes Were Brought During the Bayelsa Elections
Udengs Eradiri, the Labour Party candidate in just concluded governorship elections held in Bayelsa State on Saturday November 11, 2023 says, the votes in the media were brought with funds. In this interview monitored on a national television on Saturday night, Udengs Eradiri blames electorates for his poor political outing. Excerpts.
How will you describe the elections?
I went to the market and wasn’t able to buy the goods in the market. What we saw was not an election but a place where money was exchanged for goods. On the face value, if you look at some units, you would think everything is going on smoothly but as you vote, the agents who have already been compromised including the staff of INEC would see whom you have voted for. Once you vote and you want to put it in the ballot box, you would show them and cash is exchanged.
I am not going to buy anybody’s vote.
The party leadership collected a hundred million naira from the government, saying they would support the governor. They started fighting over sharing formula, they claimed that they sent N50m to the National body, that issue is tearing the Labour Party apart here. The money that came into my community, people have never seen that kind of money in their lives before.
Bayelsa State funds for the development of the state was on the streets being shared to gather votes, all those votes they are brandishing before the media are all bought votes. They cannot go to an election without the people’s money. Individuals everywhere were betrayed. I stood my grounds and I’m made to live with it, so it is not the people’s choice
No matter how we amend and improve our laws, it still comes down to the people, if they’re not willing to let anything stand, we cannot make any headway?
Yes, because they are encouraging the people in government to behave the way they like because this is an opportunity to stop them. My suggestion is that we can try isolation, the voting area and the ballot box from the agents, I am just thinking how we can do this things to keep agents away so once you go in there, it would be difficult to access the votes. If we can be strict with that, we would see changes.
But at the end of the day, the police and the INEC Staff are also part of the conspiracy, so when you are trying to block it by law, they would device another means. For instance now how am I going to go to court and say that there was vote buying because you won’t see it happening there but behind the scenes you must show the agent your ballot paper.
You said Labour Party collected N100m and it is dividing the party, which of the Labour Party are you referring to?
Abure is the Chairman of the Labour Party and the State Chairman stated that the money was sent to the National, I called the National Chairman, he said he will deal with it, I’m yet to see any action taken before we went into the election but it is public knowledge in Bayelsa that Labour Party in the state have betrayed Obi before, when I came into the party, I didn’t want to rock the boat, so even when they called for the removal of the leadership, I tried to protect them because sometimes you take certain actions depending on the timing, if you don’t look at the timing properly you may shoot yourself in the foot.
I have been trying to manage to bring everyone together but because I’m not the candidate that brings money, it is from my hard earned money that I decided to do this so I know that it would be a legacy in my generation. But they expect that as party leaders do, when the excos gather, you need to bring money, that wasn’t happening. If I have any money, I want to make sure that I see where it enters so I was supervising every process to see that money is not wasted.
I have 2 hands and legs, they all have the same, I go out to work and raise money to carry out the process that I think that we can all work together to change, then they want to just sit down and spend, they felt I wasn’t doing the needful by bringing money.
What is going on, we feel that Labour Party is suppose to bring some kind of fresh air to the political space?
There is Obidient movement and there is Labour Party, this whole idea of a new Nigeria and a new political era is an Obidient thing, it has nothing to do with Labour Party, the party is the same people, same Nigerians. I think the electorate is where the problem is, the electorate must grow to the extent where they start having confidence in the electoral process, to go there and vote without inducement, this inducement has to stop.
In this election, INEC was not an umpire but a participant, this was seen in the conduct of the process and the results. When APC or other parties are making progress, there’s always an issue, there were giving much attention to the places where the PDP was succeeding. I think the onus lies on the President to change the narrative going forward. I have been in the Labour Party since 2011 when I contested for House of Representatives, this same thing I experienced in the Labour Party at that time is the same thing even now because they are the same actors.
For me, until the Obidient movement begin to migrate itself into the leadership of the Labour Party and take responsibility and also begin to do things differently, we would constantly have a situation where people only use the party structure and machinery as a means of negotiating financial benefits and gains especially during elections. This is not peculiar to Bayelsa State alone, it has been happening in all parts of the country as far as the electoral process is concerned because there is no party ideology that determines how things are done, people only use them as platforms to try and get into office.
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