The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the recently concluded Edo State governorship election, Dr. Asue Ighodalo has said that he is confident of winning his case at the state Election Petitions Tribunal.
On Sunday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Monday Okpebholo winner of the election with 291,667 votes as against 247,274 votes for PDP’s Ighodalo, while Labour Party’s (LP) Barrister Olumide Akpata got 22,763 votes. There were 14 other candidates.
But the PDP, LP and election monitoring organisations have repeatedly question the integrity of the election. Specifically, Yiaga Africa, the continent’s frontline non-profit organisation promoting participatory democracy, human rights and civic participation, reported that last Saturday’s governorship election failed the “electoral integrity test”. It attributed this to “lack of transparency in the results collation process, which led to the manipulation of results”.
On Channels Television’s Politics Today Thursday evening, Ighodalo said the election that produced Okpebholo as governor-elect was not free and fair.
He explained that his legal team has identified over 150 polling units that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) was not deployed.
“There is a lot of data, information, evidence that we have. We are fully confident that going through the tribunal, we will win the case.
“We will regain our mandate and we are clear without any doubt that we are the winners of the election last Saturday”, he said.
The PDP candidate accused INEC and police operatives of subverting the will of the people.
He alleged that the APC ruined the election in collaboration with electoral officials.
“We didn’t rig. When APC and INEC saw that APC was losing woefully, they then subverted the electoral laws and the guidelines.
“Collations are done at the polling units and then you go to the ward and then the local government collation centre and then the state. There was a jump, from ward straight to the state”, Ighodalo stated.
Source: Channels TV
