Group Canvasses Massive Votes For Oyebanji’s Re-election

The newly launched South West Independent Campaign Movement (SWICAM), has said it is working hard to ensure that the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in the forthcoming gubernatorial election, Governor Biodun Oyebanji, gets at least 1.5 million votes at the polls.

The group said such a feat is possible if a non-party strategy of campaign is employed to galvanise the people across the 177 wards in the state.

The group said the entire South West has the second largest number of voters in Nigeria and is in a position to secure 15 to 20 millon votes from the region if the people are effectively mobilised.

It however regretted that voter’s apathy in the South West is the highest in the country.

A communique issued at the end of the Congress in Ado-Ekiti signed by group’s national coordinator, Suleiman Olubayo and Mr Fred Ojinika and Idris Abukar representing the Niger Delta and Northern communities in the South West respectively, stated, “We are set to change the voting culture in the South West. We are using non-party volunteers, speaking to teachers, meeting peasants on their farms, meeting students in high and higher institutions, market women and men, while professional organisations and the young and the aged are not left out.”

The group at its maiden congress at Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital said it would use Ekiti State as the starting point towards a new, conscious voter’s culture in the South West.

Over 500 delegates from across the South West, Kwara, Kogi, Delta and Edo Statwes attended the historic event. The group said Ekiti alone with a population of over four million people is in a position to produce 1.5million votes for the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate and Governor of Ekiti State, Biodun Oyebanji.

The group said the volunteers recruited to campaign in Ekiti are young people who will move from one community to the other not just talking to the people but acting like evangelists with information, education and communication materials.

‘‘We have embarked on a revolutionary campaign. The difference is that the campaign is not led by the APC but by non-party members who are concerned about the need to preserve democracy against military intervention, sustain power shift to the South and to support the on-going efforts at restructuring the country which the APC had started,’’ they said.