On Monday, Ebonyi State Governor David Umahi revealed how his family plotted against him to vote for Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate Peter Obi during the presidential election.
This was revealed by the All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftain during an interview on Channels Television.
Umahi said it was surprising that President Muhammadu Buhari and the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, lost their states to the opposition parties at the February 25 polls.
According to him, he never expected that LP would win any election in Ebonyi State because of the structure that has been put in place so that no other political party can even win councilorship in the state.
The governor said he was also unaware that his family voted for Peter Obi but voted APC in other elections in the state.
He added that votes obtained by Peter Obi during the election were protest votes due to Nigeria’s seeming hardship and challenges.
He said: “In all honesty, I didn’t give any chance to the Labour Party to win any election in my state (Ebonyi State) because what we have put in place was such that no other political party should be able to win anything, not even Councilorship election in my state. I saw the Labour Party vote as a protest against my Party (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
“I was very surprised; even in my family, there was a conspiracy against me. I did not know that they voted for Peter Obi, but in the other elections, they voted for APC because of what we’ve done in the state. It’s very surprising.
Obi defeated his major contenders in the PDP and the APC and was declared the winner of the presidential election in Ebonyi State.
Obi polled over 75 per cent of the votes cast in Ebonyi State. None of the other candidates polled up to 25 per cent of the votes cast in the state.
The LP candidate garnered a total of 259,738 votes to defeat Bola Tinubu of the APC who got 42,402 votes. Atiku Abubakar of the PDP polled 13,503 votes to come third in the election.
Speaking further, Umahi said he was also surprised that the President-elect, Tinubu, could lose Lagos State.
However, reacting to Umahi, the Director-General of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Akin Osuntokun insisted that it was a general trend, and said Umahi was not the only person affected.
He said: ” It was a general trend. I don’t understand what Umahi meant by conspiracy. If you ask young people over the country who they voted for, you would realize all of them voted for Obi. So, it was not just his home alone that was affected but a trend everywhere.”