James Faleke
The All Progressives Congress, APC on Monday evening finally announced Yahaya Bello as its replacement for Abubakar Audu, its candidate in the Kogi State gubernatorial poll held on Saturday, 21 November.
Audu died shortly after the result of the polls was announced as ‘inconclusive’ in Lokoja, the state capital. He was leading his closest challenger, Idris Wada who is also the incumbent governor of the state by 41,000-vote lead before his death.
But the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had insisted the election in 91 polling units must be conducted to declare the winner.
INEC then asked APC to nominate another candidate for the supplementary election to conclude the process.
But the death of Audu has thrown up a constitutional crises, with the deceased’s running mate, James Faleke claiming to be the right inheritors of the votes while APC seemed to have settled for Bello who finished second in the APC gubernatorial primaries.
According to the electoral umpire, there were 49,000 registered voters in the areas, more than the margin of victory of the APC candidate.
But analysts have argued that the Commission insistence on the supplementary polls is wrong as the number of voters qualified to vote with permanent voters card, is about 25,000, less than the 41,000 votes Audu had piled up to lead Wada in the 21 November election.
Yahaya Bello picked to succeed Audu as APC governorship candidate in Kogi
Based on this premise, Faleke had argued that the election has been concluded and he should be declared the winner since his principal is dead in accordance to Electoral Act.
The deputy governorship candidate had since last week wrote two letters to INEC and the leadership of APC asking to be nominated as the replacement for Audu. But reports over the weekend indicated that the leadership of APC had already submitted the name of …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
