Senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye and Abubakar Ibrahim, son of former Kogi state governor, Ibrahim Idris, have kicked against the emergence of Engineer Musa Wada as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the governorship election in Kogi state slated for November 16.
Ibrahim and Melaye stormed the party’s national secretariat, on Wednesday, where they met with the National Working Committee behind closed doors
The duo petitioned the party’s Appeal Committee for Bayelsa and Kogi states’ primaries headed by the PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus.
Melaye submitted his petition to the National Secretary of the party, Senator Ibrahim Tsauri questioning why only votes from two (2) out of ten (10) ballot boxes were counted for him in the just concluded primaries.
Abubakar on the other hand is questioning the credibility of the process.
The contentious primary election is being challenged on the grounds that an aspirant’s agent ‘rescued’ ballot boxes and papers after gunmen attacked the venue of the primaries around 1:50am, took them to the house of his candidate and returned same by 11:00am for counting. The aggrieved aspirants argued that the integrity of the elections have been compromised.
According to them, there were neither witnesses from other aspirants, agents, INEC or security agents to confirm that the contents of the boxes were not tampered with.
Another ground is that the sorting of the ballot papers wasn’t concluded in the presence of all as provided in the guidelines.
Also, the venue communicated INEC for the primary election was Confluence Stadium, Lokoja but the results were announced at a different location.
Chairman, PDP Kogi State Governorship Primary, Ahmadu Fintri, had declared Musa Wada who polled 748 votes as the winner of the primary.
Ibrahim came second with 710 votes, while Melaye came fourth, having scored 70 votes behind Idris Wada who came third with 345 votes.
Not satisfied with the outcome of the primaries, Melaye alleged that was allowed to bring over 600 votes from his house which, he said, the Governor Ahmadu Fintiri-led electoral committee accepted and counted in his favour.
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Ibrahim, who came second, said that the winner defeated him with 38 votes, which, he said, was not up to the missing 247 ballot papers.
He expressed the confidence that if the missing ballot papers could be recovered, he would emerge the winner.
