Why APC supporters boycotted governorship election- Sen. Ayogu

…Says no election took place in Enugu

Tunde Opalana, Abuja

Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in last Saturday’s governorship election in Enugu state, Senator Ayogu Eze said supporters of the party boycotted the election in protest of the removal of his name from the list of governorship candidates few days to the election.

Media Director of his campaign organization, Okey Ezirigwe, said that as of the day of the election, Sen. Eze’s name had not been restored to the list of candidates for the election, even after the Court of Appeal, Abuja had ordered that his name be restored on the list.

In a statement made available to the press in Abuja on Wednesday, Ezirigwe said “though the INEC was served the court order at 5pm on March 7, Sen. Eze’s name was not on that list even by the time the polls closed at 2pm on March 9.”

He wondered how INEC expected Sen. Eze to meaningfully take part in an election where his supporters had been told through the its portal that he was no longer a candidate for the election.

Ezirigwe added that “why didn’t INEC cancel and reschedule the election when it found out it had unwittingly changed the rules of the game just before the game started, by advertising to our supporters and the whole world that our principal was no longer in the race and never took any steps to reverse that impression even after the court had asked it do so?”

He asserted that by not putting back the name on its portal and other relevant documents for the election as ordered by a competent court, INEC had inadvertently descended into the arena of partisanship by taking actions that tended to give the impression that it was no longer impartial.

According to him, fabricating and allotting results to candidates, including the ridiculous scores ascribed to his principal, doesn’t exonerate the INEC from its responsibility of conducting an election where every contestant has an equal opportunity before the electorate.

He added that what happened in Enugu was a pre – determined allotment of figures to favour a particular candidate while embarrassing the candidate of the APC with the laughable figures attributed to him.

“No election took place in Enugu, as the election was roundly boycotted by the people who had yearned for change, but were denied the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice by some forces that colluded with the INEC to change the rule of the game while the game was underway.

“We reject those phantom figures generated from the mills of master riggers and displayed as results of an election where the voter turnout was less than five per cent. We’ll take all legitimate steps to ensure that this fraud does not see the light of day,” Ayogu’s spokesman added.