Some of the candidates that took part in the Kogi State governorship primaries for the All Progressives Congress (APC) have disapproved of the results of the election.
Senator Smart Adeyemi, Prince Shuaibu Audu, Professor Stephen Oseni, and Yakubu Ajaka, a member of the APC National Working Committee, were among the candidates that disapproved of the results.
The secretary of the Kogi State APC Primary Election Committee, Patrick Obahiagbon, reportedly announced Ahmed Usman Ododo, a former Kogi Auditor General for Local Governments, as the APC standard bearer for the election scheduled for November on behalf of the panel’s chairman, Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle.
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Speaking to reporters on Saturday, four of the candidates called the election process that produced Ododo a “sham” and urged the APC NWC to ignore the results.
The team sent to conduct the direct primary and INEC officials, according to Senator Smart Adeyemi (APC-Kogi West), were nowhere to be seen, hence there was no election, he claimed.
He said: “It was scheduled for yesterday (Friday) The election was supposed to be concluded by 2 pm. Results were prepared even before the commencement of voting.
“This is the worst form of rigging, it was unprecedented. There was no election. For somebody to have audacity to write results, we are saying the INEC should be prepared to tell Nigerians if election was conducted.
“None of the officials of INEC and the panel led by Zamfara state governor came out. We are aware that Governor Matawalle wasn’t happy with the sham and that was why he left.
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“There is a guideline that in the absence of the Chairman, that secretary should not announce the result. What we had was allocation of votes. The purported winner is the Auditor General of Kogi.
“We have no problem with the Governor but the level of his involvement. There was no election at all.
“It was supposed to be a direct primary, people were mobilised but there was no election.”
Adeyemi who admitted that aggrieved aspirants organised a parallel Congress was however silent on the winner.
“Some of us have to organise a parallel Congress.
“If the APC refuses to do what is right, it will be difficult for people to vote for us in Kogi. What happened was a betrayal of democracy. People were not allowed to vote, results were written.
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“I want to call on the leadership of the party to avoid the collapse of the party. The tenets of democracy is one man, one vote,” he added.
Audu also urged Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the president-elect, to persuade the Senator Abdullahi Adamu-led NWC not to submit Ododo’s name to INEC.
He said: “I was at my Polling Unit, I waited till 6 pm, no election materials, no INEC officials. It was a sham of a process, the election did not hold. I will like to appeal to the NWC to take a look at the sham that happened on April 14. I will like to call on the President-elect and Vice President to take a look at it. It was a sham of a process and we don’t want it to stand.”
Ajaka, a different candidate, charged that the staff in charge of the procedure had betrayed his trust.
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He stated to reporters that the APC NWC, of which he is a member, would not permit the Kogi primary results to be ratified.
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