The All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Kogi State government have called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to disregard the request from the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its governorship candidate for the Kogi State election on November 11, 2023, to halt the inspection of polling materials.
SDP stated that a request of this nature cannot supersede the court’s decision for the inspection exercise, rejecting the requests of APC and Kogi to cancel the inspection.
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In a statement released in Abuja by its Governorship Campaign Council Spokesperson, Faruk Adejoh-Audu, the party insisted that the APC and Kogi’s request to cancel the inspection was not only bizarre and frantic, but also unfounded given the court’s ongoing order requiring the inspection of the election materials.
The APC had urged INEC to prevent the legal team of the SDP and its governorship candidate from being granted any more access to examine the materials utilised for the November 11, 2023 governorship election through Mr. Kingsley Fanwo, the Kogi State Commissioner for Information.
Among other things, Fanwo had stated that the Kogi State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal’s ordered inspection process would give the opposition party an unfair advantage in the ongoing legal dispute on the election.
But according to SDP’s statement, the call from the APC and Kogi was really a desperate attempt to end the petition’s 180-day legal period before it could be heard.
The party claimed that in November of last year, the Kogi State government had outfitted a few political goons in SDP T-shirts and organised them to go to the INEC office and demand that the court-ordered inspection exercise be cancelled.
For the first time in Nigerian history, according to SDP, materials used in state polls had to be transported to Abuja in order to keep sponsored thugs from destroying them and putting the court review process in jeopardy.
“Once again, Nigerians have been inundated with the crude and relentless crusade of government in Kogi State to ignite a phantom controversy aimed at discrediting the judicial review of the electoral heist in Kogi on November 11, 2023 with the hope of further delaying the process,” partially read the SDP statement.
The Kogi State Elections Petition Tribunal’s ruling allowing our candidate’s legal team to view the election materials was overruled by INEC on Tuesday. One Kingsley Fanwo, the information commissioner who has been spreading misinformation and rumours on behalf of the Kogi State government, made this request.
The latest in a string of desperate attempts to destroy, undermine, or end the Tribunal’s proceedings is the Kogi Government’s outburst on Tuesday. This was done to allow Ahmed Usman Ododo, a puppet and cousin of Mr. Yahaya Bello, to take away the people’s mandate as part of the heinous electoral heist that occurred on November 11th and win the governorship.
During the legal proceedings, Mr. Bello and his security allies in Kogi State went to the absurd length of dressing up more than 500 thugs in SDP T-shirts and sending them to INEC on November 29, 2023, in an attempt to thwart the tribunal’s order to inspect the materials.
“Materials used for state elections had to be spirited away to Abuja for the first time in Nigerian history to prevent state government from destroying them and forcing a fait accompli on the judicial review process because these attacks were so desperate and brazen, which everyone knew was being orchestrated by Mr. Bello.”
“On November 30, the Tribunal was compelled to postpone its proceedings indefinitely until it received compliance with its directive permitting the SDP Candidate to view the materials.
Nigerians must therefore interpret the falsehood-spouting purveyors’ outbursts on Tuesday, demanding an end to the inspection of the aforementioned materials, as a continuation of their campaign to undermine the legal system and squander the 180-day statutory period given to the tribunal of first instance to decide an election petition.
However, they have fallen short. Despite their desperate attempts to evade judicial accountability by committing various crimes to halt the proceedings, the SDP petition will be tried within the legally mandated time frame.
We implore the Kogi State operatives to submit to a court examination in order to determine whether the egregious election theft that occurred on November 11, 2023, can withstand the barest minimum of examination.
Any attempt at self-help will be futile if thugs are deployed to slow down the process or if lies are told to hide the problems, according to the statement.
