Kogi: PDP rejects INEC’s verdict, heads for tribunal

 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Sunday said it would challenge the outcome of the governor ship election in Kogi before the election petition tribunal. The Publicity Secretary of the party in Kogi, Mr Bode Ogunmola, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lokoja. Earlier on Sunday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Mr Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of Kogi governorship election. Bello scored 247,762 votes to defeat the incumbent Governor, Idris Wada of the PDP, who polled 204,877 votes. The Returning Officer of the governorship election, Prof. Emmanuel Kucha, declared the results in Lokoja after the conclusion of the supplementary election held in 91 polling units. He said the results were a merger of the election held on Nov. 21 and the supplementary poll conducted in 91 polling units on Dec. 5. “The results of the supplementary election shows that the APC scored 6,885 votes, while PDP got 5,363 votes.
“Only 13,000 out of the 49,000 registered voters expected to vote in the supplementary election turned out for accreditation and voting,’’ he said. Kucha said out of the 494,723 votes cast during the exercise, only 21,740 were invalidated. Mr Mumuni Okara, agent of the APC at the collation centre, described the results as satisfactory, saying that the declared results tallied what the party’s agents had obtained from the various polling units.
Capt. Joe Agada (rtd), who represented the PDP at the collation centre, however, said his party would challenge the results at the tribunal Speaking with NAN, Ogunmola said the results of the election was unacceptable to the party and cannot stand the test of time. He said the death of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abubakar Audu on Nov. 22, while collation was ongoing had made it inevitable for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare PDP candidate, Idris Wada, winner of the poll. Ogunmola said PDP had rejected the declaration of Yahaya Bello as winner of the exercise, saying that the party would challenge the results before the tribunal.
The APC candidate in the supplementary election and governor-elect, Yahaya Bello, in a short interview with some journalists in Lokoja on Sunday, said he will reach out to aggrieved members of his party and embark on a reconciliation move, especially with the political family of the late Prince Audu. However, the Audu/Faleke Campaign Organisation has aslo distanced itself from the declaration of Yahaya as Governor-elect by INEC. In a statement issued in Lokoja by its Director of Media, Duro Meseko, the organisation said that the final result declared by INEC, has vindicated its earlier claims that the election of November 21, 2015 was already won by the Audu/Faleke joint ticket and should have been declared as such.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)