In order to create a semblance of sanity and go into the upcoming Kogi Gubernatorial election with one house, it is imperative for the leadership of the party both at the state and local level to provide answers to some nagging questions arising from the PDP primaries of September 3, 2019.
During the sorting of the ballot, the Chairman of the Panel and one other member read out each of the ballot for the aspirants and handed them over to their respective agents. Journalists and other party faithfuls present at the venue recorded the votes for each of the aspirants as it was being reeled out before the fracas ensued.
As at the time of the interruption, Ibrahim Idris had 363 votes while his closet rival had Engr. Musa Wada 366 votes. It is an incontestable fact that none of the leading aspirant had up to 400 votes before hoodlums stopped the process.
Strangely, the following day, when delegates converged to complete the counting, the agent of Engr. Musa Wada came with about 600 votes. Where in the world did Engr. Musa Wada get the extra 237 votes from? From all available records and empirical evidence, the numbers manufactured by Engr. Wada agent was far in excess of what was sorted, declared and recorded before the process came to an abrupt halt a day earlier. This 8th wonder of the world must be explained if the process is to earn any form of credibility.
On the strength of the above firm assertion, we use this medium to call on the Appeal Panel and by extension the hierarchy of the party to ask the Electoral Panel to explain this huge difference between the ballot counted on the 3rd and the one returned by Engr. Wada’s agent on the 4th of September, 2019.
Failure to give satisfactory response to this anomaly will not only cast a dark shadow on the sincerity of the process, it would lend credibility to the impression flying around that the fracas was premeditated and was deliberately designed to disrupt the counting to give room for manipulation. We await the party’s response to this poser.
– Festus Dogo writes from Lokoja.
