Kogi poll: Wada, PDP reject outcome, head to tribunal

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.Douye asks INEC to declare him winner of Bayelsa guber election

.APC thanks Kogi, Bayelsa voters for backing party

Governor Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been declared winner of the governorship election held in Kogi State on November 16 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Returning officer of the election, Prof. Ibrahim Garba, who announced the result in Lokoja on Monday said that Bello polled 406, 222 votes to beat 24 other contestants, including Mr. Musa Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 189, 704 votes.

He announced that Mrs. Natasha Akpoti, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party came third by scoring 9, 482 votes; Mrs. Justina Abanida of the African Democratic Party scored 706 votes to come fourth while the candidate of PDF came fifth with 624 votes.

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Garba said that Gov. Bello having scored the majority of votes and met other constitutional requirements is declared the winner. He said that 636, 202 out of the 1, 636, 350 registered voters in the state were accredited for the election out of which 624,514 eventually voted.

Garba gave the total valid votes cast during the election as 610, 744, number of rejected votes was 13, 770 while cancelled votes were 149, 576 votes.

Reacting to the announcement, the PDP candidate, Musa Wada and the party have resolved to challenge the declaration of Gov. Bello as winner of Saturday’s governorship election in the state.

Wada, who addressed the press along with his running mate, Samuel Aro at the PDP secretariat in Abuja on Monday, said it is clear to all there was no election on Saturday, but a declaration and execution of war against the people.

He vowed that the brazen rape of democracy will not go unchallenged as the PDP will legally retrieve the mandate freely given him as the party’s candidate through legal process starting with an appeal at the governorship election petition tribunal.

What happened in Kogi, according to Wada, was “an organised war against democracy; coup against the people and seizure of power through brigandage and the barrel of the gun with members of the police and other security agencies coordinating the stealing of the people’s votes.

“The police aided armed APC thugs to invade polling units with impunity, shoot and kill voters and carted away ballot boxes to government facilities where results were written in favour of APC and handed over to INEC to announce against the will of the people.

“Police helicopters were used to attack polling units, fire tear gas on voters and provide cover to APC hoodlums and policemen who brutalized the people of the state and stole their mandate.

“The APC turned our state into a theatre of war. No fewer than nine innocent Nigerians were killed. Many more were maimed and injured by the APC in their desperation to seize power at all cost.”

Wada slammed INEC for going ahead with the collation and declaration of what he called fabricated results despite the glaring disruptions that characterized the shambolic exercise.

In order to achieve this goal, he said INEC cancelled votes in areas of PDP stronghold, subtracted from its votes in many other areas and padded the votes of APC to give a semblance of victory for APC.

He said the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, will surely account to God and the people for the roles they played in this election; if not in this world, then certainly in the hereafter.

“The people of Kogi were horrified, brutalized and dehumanized. There have been weeping across the state since the announcement of another four years of Yahaya Bello.

“We therefore, stand with the people of Kogi to state without equivocation that this brigandage and stealing of our mandate cannot stand.

“We will never despair but remain strong in our determination to retrieve the mandate freely given to us by the people in their desire for a change. We will pursue this course to its logical conclusion within the confines of the law of this country.

“We commend the people of Kogi State for their resilience in the face of all intimidation. They showed, once again, that nobody can suppress their will at any time.

“Our campaign mourns our compatriots that were killed by the APC; their blood demand for justice and we will ensure that they did not die in vain,” Wada added.

The party called on Nigerians to stand with the people of Kogi State at this trying time as they quest for the restoration of their mandate in this election.

Meanwhile, PDP’s gubernatorial candidate in Bayelsa State, Senator Diri Douye, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare him and the PDP winner, insisting that he is indeed, the winner of the governorship election.

Sen. Diri made the call at a press conference held on Monday at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.

According to Diri, the stand he has taken is a collective one even though INEC looked the other way by declaring somebody else winner of the poll, noting that the result from the PDP situation room set up prior to the election showed that he is the winner of the just concluded election.

He said: “INEC should declare my humble self and the PDP as the winner of the just concluded governorship election. But, before I go into that, I want to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all Bayelsans who turned up in their large numbers to exercise their franchise and ensure that the will of the people to elect who should govern them was done.

“I am not just saying that PDP is the winner of the just concluded elections. You recalled that yesterday (Sunday) I gave a press conference and in that conference, I informed you that we had a situation room that was monitoring the exercise across all the local government areas and all wards in the state.

“As we speak today (Monday), I have the results of that monitoring and I will give you the results. From our situation room, in Brass Local Government Area, APC had 2, 525, PDP had 4, 096 votes. In Ekeremor Local Government, APC had 8, 780, PDP had 21, 381. In Kolokuma/Opokuma, APC had 6, 659, PDP had 12, 110. In Nembe, APC had 980 votes, PDP had 24 votes.

“At Ogbia, APC had 7, 976, PDP 9, 903. Sagbama, APC had 7, 831 while PDP had 60,339. In Southern Ijaw, APC had 9, 542, while PDP had 12, 225. In Yenagoa, APC had 15, 560, PDP had 21, 165. Totalling APC had 55, 903, PDP had 98, 582. This is the result from our situation room. So based on these results, PDP and its candidate is the winner of the just concluded election.

“That is the first leg. Now the second leg; assuming they say no, the results from our situation room are all wrong, we are not supposed to have a result. Assuming we concede to that, we have a second leg.

“You are all witnesses when the agent of the PDP, Chief Odomu Osusu kick -started the process with a legal question and that question was that he wants INEC to come up with the court judgement setting aside the judgment from the lower court which the APC claim they have that, otherwise the APC has no business in the collation room.

“And you all are living witnesses; INEC did not answer that question. And so, we believe that the subsisting court judgment is true and as of conducting this election, APC was not by the law to be in the ballot. And so we contested the election not with APC, but with other political parties.

“Therefore, even in the result that INEC has declared, if you remove APC who legally is not a party to that election, the PDP led in that result. And therefore, we urgently call on INEC to declare me and the PDP the winners of that election.

“That is why I said from the beginning that I am no longer a candidate, I am indeed winner of that election and the governor-elect and the party is the PDP.”

Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has thanked the people of Kogi and Bayelsa states over its resounding victory in governorship election in the states.

In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Malam Lanre Issa-Onilu, APC congratulated all Nigerians, its teeming supporters and members for the hard-earned election victory.

According to Issa-Onilu, indeed, these victories are as significant as are well-deserved.

“In Kogi, our great party is delighted that the good people of the state ignored the propaganda and clannish campaign by the opposition and re-elected our candidate, Governor Yahaya Bello. We cannot thank the Kogi electorate enough.

“Although, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared the senatorial election in Kogi West inconclusive, we are confident that when the supplementary election is held, our candidate, Sen. Smart Adeyemi will reclaim his earlier stolen mandate.

“Our party’s victory in Bayelsa is even more of a landmark. Against all odds and in defiance of the established but retrogressive political order since 1999, Bayelsans decided through their votes to overwhelmingly elect our governorship candidate, David Lyon,” he said.

He said Bayelsans decided to ditch the disastrous regime of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and pitch their tent with a progressive platform.

According to him, this is a sacred trust our candidate and party will not take for granted.

“The party expresses its profound appreciation to President Muhammadu Buhari for his moral support for our candidates; the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, our governors and other party leaders for their support and distinguished presence at our rallies in Kogi and Bayelsa.

“We also thank the First Lady, Hajiya Aisha Muhammadu Buhari; wife of the Vice President, Mrs. Dolapo Osinbajo for rallying massive support during the final grand rally in Lokoja, Kogi State.

“We appreciate the tireless efforts of our National Campaign Councils for Kogi and Bayelsa, headed by Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna and Governor Mohammed Badaru of Jigawa,” Issa-Onilu said.

He said that the party dedicated its election successes to the good people of the two states with a solemn promise that victorious candidates would justify the confidence reposed in them.

“There remains much to be done in ensuring the sanctity of our electioneering process, particularly partisan approach to elections.

“The PDP must begin to address itself to the new reality that votes are beginning to count. PDP’s retrogressive tactics of massive thumb printing, ballot box snatching, vote buying, thuggery, violence and other illegal schemes will no longer win election for them,” he said.