Parties who lost the governorship elections on Saturday, March 18 in three states have rejected the outcome of the results declared while their supporters have trooped to the streets to protest and also demand the cancellation of the results.
The parties involved are the Labour party (LP) in Abia State, the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in Taraba State and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano State.
In Abia State, the LP supporters stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office on Tuesday, demanding that the commission should declare Alex Otti as the winner of the governorship election in the state.
Meanwhile, the INEC spokesperson in the state said all the election materials, including BVAS machines, used in Obingwa Local Government Area for the governorship poll had been moved to Abuja for analysis.
Similarly, the NNPP (NNPP) Governorship Candidate in Taraba State, Professor Sani Muhammed Yahaya, has rejected the state’s governorship election results declared by the INEC.
Yahaya said the results were not what was actually recorded in the field.
He said he won the election but the results were manipulated, adding that people in the state knew that it was the NNPP that actually won the election.
Yahaya has declared that he would challenge the results in court, adding that he has started the legal process to reclaim his victory.
He urged his supporters to be calm and not take the law into their own hands.
“Victory is our own, we won the election. Everyone in Taraba State knows that l won the election and we are going to take legal action to reclaim our victory,” he
In Kano, the APC has given the INEC seven days to review the declaration of results of the state gubernatorial elections.
It would be recalled that the Returning Officer of INEC for Kano, Professor Ahmad Doko Ibrahim, Monday morning declared Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) as the winner of the election.
He said he declared the results based on his interpretation of the Electoral Act and election guideline that where the election was cancelled as a result of violence, the disenfranchised voters in such area would not count in the margin of lead principle between the first and the runner-up.
The party’s Legal Adviser in the state, Barrister Abdul Fagge, said the INEC returning officer erred in law and acted ultra vires of the Electoral Act by distinguishing cancellations due to violence and over-voting and deciding only to consider the latter in the final consideration of a margin of lead.
Fagge said 273,442 PVCs were collected in areas where the election was cancelled as a result of violence and over-voting, a figure he said meant that the margin of victory (128,897) used to declare Yusuf of the NNPP was not sufficiently based on the Electoral Act.
He said it was astonishing that with the same election, 16 of the House of Assembly elections held the same day and under the same conditions were declared inconclusive by the INEC
The gubernatorial candidate of the APC in the state, Nasir Yusuf Gawuna, appealed to party supporters to continue to maintain calm in the face of provocation while condoling with families of those that have lost their lives and those that have lost their properties due to the election and post-election violence.
Gawuna, the state’s deputy governorship, expressed optimism that INEC would do the needful by not disenfranchising the majority of voters in the state.
