Following the inconclusive governorship election
declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Bauchi State,
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has
called on the incumbent state Governor, Mohammed Abubakar, to surrender the
mandate of the people as he has already lost the election.
It was reported that the Returning Officer for the
elections in the state, Prof Mohammed Kyari, last Sunday declared that the
election in Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area of the state was inconclusive.
According to him, the PDP governorship candidate,
Senator Bala Mohammed, got 469, 512 votes to defeat his closest rival and
incumbent Governor, Abubakar of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who scored
465, 453 votes.
Kyari had said the margin between the two
candidates were 4, 059 votes, having cancelled the votes of Tafawa Balewa LGA
which were 139, 240.
The INEC returning officer added that the number of
cancelled votes in the elections even without that of Tafawa Balewa LGA were 45,
312 and had declared that: “I, therefore, based on Section 26 (53 ) of the
Electoral Act, declare the elections in Bauchi State inconclusive.”
He also directed INEC to conduct a re-run election
in the affected LGA within the next 21 days.
However, the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
Hon. Yakubu Dogara, who was flanked by the PDP governorship candidate, Mohammed,
and state party chairman and other party stalwarts at the National Union of
Journalists (NUJ) secretariat on Monday in Bauchi, alleged that the cancellation
of election in Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area by the state Returning Officer,
Professor Kyari, was illegal and orchestrated to oppress the people of the
state.
Dogara alleged further that the governor had on
several occasions referred to him as a light-weight politician, whose constituency
could only deliver nothing more than seventy thousand votes, adding that
Governor Abubakar boasted that he won his election in 2015 with three hundred
thousand votes, and doesn’t need any vote from Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area
to become the governor.
"I want the media to ask the governor if it will
not therefore amount to an act of unprecedented shamelessness for him to go now
to Tafawa Balewa, my constituency, with only seventy thousand votes that he
does not require and campaign for their votes or to illegally source from there
to make up and become the governor.
"If there is any honour on his part, having
declared that he doesn't need one single vote from there, I think honour
demands that he should surrender at this point that he has lost this election."
The Speaker alleged that apart from the illegal
cancellation, INEC in the state was still sourcing for other units that they
will cancel even after they have collated and declared the results as they are
not sure of what will happen in Tafawa Balewa during the supplementary
election.
Dogara said the election was peaceful, free and
fair at the unit level as attested to by the local government returning
officer, alleging that the only challenge they encountered was that political
thugs of the governor invaded the local government collation centre and carted
away with some result sheets.
He called on INEC Chairman, Mamoud Yakubu, to
intervene in the election crisis rocking the state, saying the declaration of inconclusive election in the
state by INEC was a brazen rape of the mandate of Bauchi State.
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