Adamawa Governorship: APC rejects results

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Adamawa State on Monday rejected the declaration of the governorship election in the state inconclusive.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday said the election was inconclusive because the margin between the two top contestants was not as wide as the number of registered voters in some areas where the election was cancelled.

But the APC, which returned second in the election results so far collated, said INEC should do more than a mere rerun of the poll in 44 polling units where INEC has decided to do a rerun.

At a press conference on Monday at its secretariat, APC said INEC cancelled only units where its candidate, Governor Jibrilla Bindow, was supposed to win.

The party called for the cancellation of the election in more polling units in different local government areas do a repeat election there too.

The zonal National Vice chairman of APC, Mustapha Salisu, who is the party’s state collation officer for the governorship election, spoke to journalists at the event.

Mr. Salisu said the INEC assisted by soldiers and the police helped the opposition to rig the Saturday election.

“During the collation exercise, we have itemised the local governments where card readers were not used, where there were over-voting, intimidation of our supporters, and many irregularities,” he said.

“There are petitions we filed and were all serially rejected at the units, wards, the local governments level and to some extent even at the state collation. Our petitions were rejected.

“It is evident that the whole process has been compromised. We saw the signal from the presidential election where, in a lot of units, card readers were not used. And over voting was evident even at the state Collation Centre where you saw the Collation Officer was trying to help the local government collation officer to tailor results in such a manner that it will be able to fit the altered numbers.

“When we made observations and complained, the State Returning Officer simply asked them to go back to a corner and correct the figures. This happened in the full glare of the press camera.

“In view of these anomalies and occurrences, particularly in Demsa Local Government, where proper elections did not take place and our agents were intimidated and harassed from being able to witness the collation; and also in Lamurde, Guyuk and Numan, we said the results announced there are unacceptable.

“We still have issues in Hong where our party agent was killed and collation went on without the representative of the APC. And they turned in the results and the same result was accepted.

“We had a similar issue in Song Local Government, where four wards were brought to collation centres but were not computed and signed at those collation centres.
“Soldiers simply whisked away the Collation Officer, the EO and the results to an unknown place and later on they changed vehicles and results were brought into the state Collation Centre. Our agents did not sign or collect copies of the results.

“The same thing happened in Michika and Madagali where card readers were not used in most of the polling units. We submitted our complaints which were not listened to and they took in the results which they were eager to publish and announce.”

Mr Salisu said their major problems was the denial they suffered in the “four stages of making complaints” during an election process: The polling unit, the wards, the local government and the state collation centres.

“All that the state collation officer was interested in was receiving the results even when I raised alarm… This has clearly shown that the electoral officials were compromised.

“So as a party, we reject the results of the governorship election in Adamawa State in its totality and we call for the cancellation of all these places where card readers were not used, and where there was over-voting or extreme violence against our agents,” said the APC zonal vice-chairman.