The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has opened up on the reason the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi was able to defeat the President-elect, Bola Tinubu during the February 25 presidential election in Lagos State.
According to Fashola, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was shocked that the LP flag bearer was able to take Tinubu’s stronghold from him.
OsunDaily News reports that the LP flag bearer had secured 582,454 votes in Lagos to defeat his closest challenger, Bola Tinubu of the APC, who scored 572, 606 votes.
A total of 1,347,152 people were accredited for the election in Lagos, a state where Tinubu has a lot of political control and influence.
Tinubu won in the majority of the 20 local governments in Lagos (11), Obi’s total votes were more, while he also won in the remaining nine local government areas.
Speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Fashola said that the LP were able to take Tinubu’s stronghold from him because they turned their voters on in Lagos and decimated the chances of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The former Lagos Governor also stated that the APC conducted pre-election internal polls, but never released it, describing polls that predicted victory for Obi and Atiku as “badly conducted”.
He said his party knew states where it had high chances of winning and had concentrated its energy in those states.
However, Fashola said his party was blindsided in some cases and one of such cases was in Lagos state.
“In some cases, you get blindsided. We were blindsided in Lagos because the opposition turned out their voters there.
“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,” he said.
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”
