A few governorship aspirants who participated in Kogi State primaries under the platform the All Progressives Congress (APC) have rejected the outcome of the process.
The aspirants that rejected the results included Smart Adeyemi, Prince Shuaibu Audu, Stephen Oseni and a member of the APC National Working Committee (NWC), Yakubu Ajaka.
Information Nigeria had reported that the secretary of the Kogi State APC Primary Election Committee, Patrick Obahiagbon, on behalf of the chairman of the panel, Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara State, announced a former Auditor General for Local Governments in Kogi, Ahmed Usman Ododo, the APC standard bearer for the election fixed for November.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday, four of the aspirants dismissed the process that produced Ododo as a “sham”, calling on the APC NWC to disregard the outcome of the polls.
Senator Smart Adeyemi (APC-Kogi West) said no election took place, claiming that the team sent to conduct the direct primary and officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) were nowhere to be found.
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.
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“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.
“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.
“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, on the other hand, called on president-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu to prevail on 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.”
Another aspirant, Ajaka, on his part, accused the team that conducted the process of betrayal of trust.
