Ladi Adebutu, the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Ogun State, seemed to have landed himself in ‘troubled waters’ after police uncovered a N2 billion vote-buying plot linked to him during the March 18 polls.
Recall Adebutu left the country recently claiming there were threats to his life but sources have now revealed that, contrary to his claim, he must have fled the country following the criminal activities he is being alleged to have been involved in during the governorship election in the state.
According to a report by Premium Times, Adebutu was alleged to have perpetrated bribery, conspiracy, undue influence contrary to sections 121 and 127 of the Electoral Act 2022, breach of electoral law prohibiting vote trading, deliberate facilitation of money laundering, and connivance to deliberately breach the monetary policy of the federation.
In the petition dated 18 March, the election day, and addressed to the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, the PDP candidate was accused of distributing ATM cards preloaded with N10, 000 to induce voters on election day.
Following the petition, the police said its officers and officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrested five suspects with hundreds of the credit cards on the election day.
Sources within the security services indicated that their investigations showed that in the build-up to the election, Adebutu had contacted his bank and caused over 200,000 prepaid Verve bank cards preloaded with N10,000 each to be printed.
The Verve cards, which were supposedly printed to honour the lawmaker’s late mother, were however uncovered as vote buying instruments going by the confessions of party agents and POS operators arrested by security agencies during the polls, which indicted the PDP guber candidate.
Investigation further revealed that contrary to Adebutu’s claim that the cards were issued during his mother’s burial, they were actually issued few days to the election, raising the obvious question of collusion by Zenith Bank with a politically exposed person to perpetrate electoral fraud.
Also, the statements by some of Adebutu’s polling agents that were arrested confirmed that he gave them the cards to manipulate the March 18 polls.
The sources described Adebutu’s actions as well-planned, carefully orchestrated and unprecedented electoral fraud made out of desperation after losing the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections using game-betting platforms and POS operators.
Adebutu and his agents were said to have distributed the cards throughout the over 5000 polling stations and positioned POS operators at the same so each voter could receive money at the POS terminals.
The cards were said to have been funded on the 16th and 17th of March directly from Adebutu’s account with Zenith Bank, with the lawmaker paying over N2.4bn directly from his account.
The source claims that Adebutu has not honoured its invitation to speak on the allegations.