By Deborah Christopher
Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola has stated that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi’s victory in Lagos in the just concluded general election was a surprise to the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Fashola, who was the former governor of Lagos State, made the revelation in an interview with newsmen during the Sunday Politics programme.
He explained that the LP turned its voters on in the state and decimated the chances of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar.
While noting that the ruling party conducted pre-election internal polls but never released it, he described polls that predicted Obi and Atiku’s victory as “badly conducted.”
Fashola, who headed the Election Planning Directorate of the Tinubu-Shettima campaign, said APC knew states where it had high chances of winning and had concentrated its energy in those states.
He said: “In some cases, you get blindsided. We were blindsided in Lagos State because the opposition turned out their voters there. And you also saw that the umbrella party that has been competitive for 24 years suddenly disappeared. It showed that their support base has shifted.”
When asked whether Obi’s victory in Lagos during the presidential poll surprised the ruling party, he said, “Yeah, blindsided us, without a doubt. They turned out their voters, and in the subsequent gubernatorial poll, we turned out our voters.”