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We had a lot of hope and belief that the emergence of the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari will signal a new way of doing things in our body polity. We dreamt and fought for change, where every Nigerian, irrespective of party, ethnic and faith differences have access to justice as enshrine in our constitution.
However, regrettably sad, our faith is shaken all too often by certain happenings especially in the electoral process in which the commission under the chairmanship of Prof Mahmood Yakubu has been involved in inconsistencies and inconclusiveness in the conduct of elections.
I express the disappointment of the people of Kogi East Senatorial District over the inability of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to issue certificate of return to the winner of Kogi East senatorial rerun election held on the 20th of February, 2016 in which Sen Atai Aidoko Ali of the People’s Democratic Party polled a total votes of 46,310 while his closest rival, Hon Ibrahim Gabriel Itodo of the Labour Party polled a total votes of 11,402 with Sen Aidoko leading his closest rival with 34,908 votes difference.
On the same day, senatorial rerun elections took place in Benue Zone ‘C’ where Senator David Mark was declared winner and returned elected with vote margin of 12,000 and in Kogi Central Senatorial District where Sen Ahmed Ogembe was later declared winner and returned elected with vote margin of 8,000.
INEC’s decision not to announce the result of the Kogi east senatorial rerun election conclusively was infantile, politically motivated to exclude and alienate the people of Kogi East from taking part in NIGERIAN politics, considering what played out in other Senatorial election reruns where INEC equally declared the election inconclusive and overturned his declaration and announced the election conclusive three days after the conduct of the elections.
In the case of Kogi East and Kogi Central Senatorial reruns, the candidate of the All Progressive Congress were both disqualified from the rerun elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission while all other political party candidates for the Kogi East Senatorial Election rerun called a press conference and adopted Senator Atai Aidoko Ali as the only candidate for the rerun election. Their decision they said was to have a peaceful conduct of the election devoid of any crises or rancor since the people were still mourning the death of former governor, Prince Abubakar Audu who died on the day he was to be declared winner of the state’s governorship election.
In the case of David Mark of the PDP and Daniel Onjeh of the APC, after the declaration of election, the APC candidate led a protest to INEC Headquarter in Makurdi where he was told by the Official of the Independent National Electoral Commission who addressed him and the crowd that ‘there has never been a re-run after a re-run anywhere in the country to his knowledge’ that Ojeh can only seek redress at the election tribunal.
In the case of Abia North Senatorial election rerun, similarly, Mr Ejike Nwankpa, the returning of officer of the INEC earlier declared the election inconclusive ignorantly siting the closeness of the result obtained by the first two candidates but the head of INEC Education and Publicity Department, Mr Edwin Enabor cleared the air that “In a re-run election, a winner must emerge by simple majority. He said The margin of lead vis-a-vis the number of registered voters does not arise in a re-run election,” it was on this ground that Sen Mao Ohuabunwa of the People’s Democratic Party was declared winner and returned elected with vote margin of 195.
The INEC has not given any concrete reason for withholding the certificate of return for the winner of the senatorial rerun election to the people of Kogi East Senatorial District who have lost two of their leaders and political icons in space of four months.
The people of Kogi East senatorial district has no representative in the National Assembly where important issues as it affects the people could be brought up for deliberation and federal government attention in the past four months now.
In the last four months, each serving senator of the federal republic of Nigeria was given opportunity of forwarding twenty graduates from his/her constituency for employment in the Nigerian Immigration Service and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps respectively. This has been done but no one from Kogi East benefited from this opportunity because we have no representative in the senate at the moment.
Just last week, every members of the National Assembly was given the form for the 2016 constituency projects to fill and submit before the end of April but there is no one representing our interest there. This is no longer the case of Sen Abdullahi Abubakar Railway or Sen Atai Aidoko Ali but the matter that should concern all of us irrespective of our political interests and party affiliations. We have fought each other enough, we have quarreled enough, we have dashed our hopes oftentimes, and in our eyes, those we can rally round as leaders have died untimely, this should be the time to look back and identify where we missed our steps as a people of IGALA Nation.
I writes on behalf of the good people of Kogi east senatorial district, asking INEC to unconditionally issue certificate of return to the winner of Kogi East Senatorial Rerun election held on the 20th of February, 2016 in line with the clarification made by the commission’s head of Education and Publicity Department, Mr Edwin Enabor in the case of Abia North Senatorial District and also in accordance with other results released by the commission so far in other rerun elections held to save us from imminent political extinction.
– Onogwu Muhammed
Lokoja, Kogi state.
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