The national leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has formally rejected the results of last Saturday’s gubernatorial election in Kogi State and demanded an immediate review of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), insisting that the party’s candidate, Alhaji Murtala Ajaka, won the poll and should be declared the duly elected governor of the state.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja, the National Chairman of the Party, Alhaji Shehu Gabam, said that SDP, as a political party, had already made its position on the Kogi gubernatorial election known to the INEC through a strong-worded petition to the Commission, to which it had yet to respond.
Alhaji Gabam who was flanked by the members of the National Working Committee, NWC of the Party, the Candidate and his Deputy, lamented that the SDP was amazed at how the umpire issued two separate press releases on the conduit of the poll, where it admitted serious infractions with assurances to carry out thorough investigation and later go ahead to announce a winner
While insisting that the Electoral Commission must do the needful to redeem itself by being above board in the Kogi governorship election, Alhaji Gabam said, “We in the SDP disagree; we are sad, we are disappointed.
At this level of civilisation, at this level of developing our democracy, such a level of brazen disregard for the rule of law is still accepted. We will not leave it; we will challenge it, and we are putting all our facts together.
According to him, “We have told the President, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that this will be the first test run for his integrity, I don’t know if we are moving into a one-party system, we are following some of the developments; we are following some of the judicial pronouncements, such as Zanfara Kano States, and we are going to retrieve our stolen mandate in Kogi
“We therefore seek a review of the election; we are calling for the cancellation of polling units affected by overvoting, the reverse of the observed irregularities, the rescinding of the result declared by the returning officer and the declaration of the proper result, the rescinding of the erroneous and unlawful return of Ahmed Ododo of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the declension of Alhaji Murtala Ajaka, duly elected as the governor of Kogi State.” He said
“We humbly request the INEC to exercise its rights and obligations under the constitution of Nigeria and the Electoral Act of 2022 to review the earlier result.
“In view of the above, we humbly request the Independent National Electoral Commission to exercise its rights and obligations under the Constitution of Nigeria and the Electoral Act, 2022, to review the earlier incorrect declaration and cancel the results where there had been irregularities and processes contrary to the provisions of the law, regulations and guidelines, and manual for the election. He demanded
“We wish to report even more infractions and infringements in the Kogi State election and therefore wish to request the Chairman to review, in accordance with Section 65(2) of the Electoral Act, 2022, the declaration by Professor Johnson Urama, acting on behalf of INEC.
“We wish to bring to the attention of the Honourable Chairman the following complaints on actions that marred the Kogi election management and were in contravention of Section 51(2) of the Act, 2022, and hence formally request the Commission to make urgent reviews.
They are: a. significantly substantial registered voters with irregular or multiple registrations were returned as lawful voters in Okene LG; b. a similar instance was observed at Okehl, Adavi, Ogori-Magogo, and Ajaokuta LGs.
“Also, activities of INEC functionaries that contravened Section 51(2) of the Electoral Act, 2022, were reported by our polling agents, who complained strongly at the ways and manners in which presiding officers at hundreds of polling units carried on; for instance:
“Allowing Forms EC8A where total votes cast and rejected votes together were more than the total BVAS accreditation counts physically shown to the polling agents.
The summation of the Total Valid votes and the Rejected votes written on Form EC8A exceeded the total votes cast as written on the same Form EC8A Overvoting also occurred in some polling units where the total votes cast exceeded the count of voters registered in the same polling unit.”
“There were areas where voting did not take place at all and polling agents were chased away, yet the presiding officers returned phantom results as lawful vote counts, such as in Barilo Ward-1 in Okene LG at Govt. Day Sec. Sch. Irivucheba-l Polling Station 1701-038, where the presiding officer scored 400 votes for APC and zero for all the other parties. Even other parties polling agents were not allowed to vote.” He added
He further added ” that Presiding Officers allowed illegal voters who failed accreditation and marked ‘FA on the Voters Register used on the election day to vote contrary to the guidelines and regulations
“That in nearly all these cases of overvoting and unlawful votes, the records of Forms EC40A, EC408, and EC40C did not match the records or did not correspond with the records put on Forms EC8A as required by the law, regulations, and guidelines.
The PVC counts of all those eligible to vote in some Polling Units are less than the total valid votes cast, even though these PVC counts were actually less than the count of voters registered
“We avow that the irregularities observed in the affected polling units substantially affected the outcome of the election and that such an irresponsible outcome would have produced a winner other than Mr Ahmed Usman Ododo of the APC and that Murtala Ajaka, the candidate of the SDP, would have and should have been declared the winner.”
“Nigeria is the biggest democracy in Africa; we are on a very fragile stage. We are having the worst situation; we are having impunity as the order of the day, where INEC admitted their officers have compromised, they demanded the arrest of those officers, they have their details, and they deployed them, but the good thing is that we have not seen security officers compromising, especially in Kogi State.
“We are not cowards; we exhibited that capacity, and we can never be cowed; this country belongs to all of us.
The president said several times that the ball stopped at his desk, but the ball was still at his desk.
The National Security Adviser said to make very sound pronouncements that boost our morale and confidence.
He said that there wouldn’t be cheating acts or malpractices that would not be condoned. His personnel will be there, monitoring the events.”
In his brief remains, the candidate of the party, Murtala Ajaka, who called for calm, stated that he had earlier told the public that he wasn’t going to challenge the declaration of Usman Ododo of the APC by INEC as the elected governor of Kogi State. But he had a change of mind about the evidence at hand and the pressure from his people.
“Though I already said I wasn’t going to court, under pressure from my people, we are going to court. We have gathered all the evidence we need to win the case.”
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