The Governor of Osun State, Ademola Adeleke, has credited his victory in the 2022 governorship election to the introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the country.
Adeleke said if not for the electronic device, his opponents would have found a way to rig him out like they did in the 2018 election.
In an interview with Arise News, Governor Adeleke insisted that his mandate was stolen in the 2018 governorship election but he chose to ignore it.
The governor further stated that those who were against him have now defected to his party and are on his side now.
He said: “That BVAS thing they introduced was for me. If they didn’t use that BVAS, they would have rigged out me again. It was that BVAS that saved me. At least Mr. President, Buhari at that time, did this one. I went to go and greet him. I said thank you for signing this BVAS into law.
“The 2018 election, I won the election even though the APC, those people that colluded against me, are now with me now. They are now in PDP and they started telling me that when they stole the mandate of the people, I was still cool. I said there was no problem, it was not yet time and I went back to school.”
Adeleke also said after he lost the election in 2018, he decided to go back to school in order to encourage his people, adding that he graduated with high honours.
He said: “See, a lot of people, they don’t know anything here. There is a system in America and I will introduce that system here. I will take it to the house of Assembly to pass it into law. In the United States, if you go to school there, maybe university or high school and if you drop out for one reason or the other, maybe you don’t have money, in my own case, I started making money. I registered as a contractor on the courier service, I had contracts here and there. So, with that money, I said let this school wait.
“So, I left and started making money and I read in the constitution that you only need high school to even be president and I attended high school. I went back to school and studied criminal justice major and political science minor. I will complete my studies in 2021.
“They now said why didn’t you go to the university of ibadan and I said I wasn’t going to do that. If I stay here, they would say you have money and you used money to buy your certificate and that’s another controversy. Let me go to America, at the age of 60, I don’t care. I want to fight for my people and I want to tell my people it’s never too late to do anything. All the people that dropped out of school, can go back to school.”
Speaking on the reports that he made an F9 in English in his WAEC exams, Adeleke said things were not as they seem and went ahead to clarify the claims.
He added: “The F9 they are talking about, when I took my WAEC, during that period in 1981, the school board or whatever, they accused our set that we had seen the paper already, so they started failing everybody and me, after I took the exam, I didn’t wait to see the result because I got my admission already in the US. Even if you carry your A1 and everything, when you get to the US you will take an exam.
“So, I did my exams, and I passed and was admitted into the school. So, I didn’t bother to check. It was when my mother died and I didn’t have time, so I sent one of my P. As to go to my school to pick it up and I saw I got F9 in English. That’s the only one and the rest, they didn’t release it. You know politics now; they started calling me F9.”