For those of us who have followed Nigeria’s politics from 1999 till date, it is interesting to see how PDP and it’s new status of opposition is playing out.
Out of frustration, the opposition party on Sunday declared its defeated candidate, Governor Idris Wada as the winner of the governorship election in Kogi State.
According to the PDP, Governor Wada scored 201,877 votes against APC Yahaya Bello’s 6,885 votes at the supplementary election.
The PDP said Wada had more votes than Bello and therefore is the elected governor.
The election which INEC declared inconclusive on November 21 even when it was obvious that APC and it’s candidate, late Abubakar Audu had won, finally came to the same expected end at the weekend, with voting in 91 polling units across 18 local government areas.
It was won by Bello of the APC. Bello was named the party’s candidate following the November 22 death of its former candidate Prince Audu, who looked good to unseat Wada after polling 240,876 votes.
But the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, described Bello’s declaration as winner of the poll by the electoral umpire as “a waste of time” that will not stand.
According to the PDP, INEC’s declaration of Bello as winner amounted to a “waste of time, a waste of scarce national resources and ridiculous shadow-chasing”. It insisted that Bello did not participate in the entire election and as such, could not be declared the winner.
To the PDP, “INEC declared Bello winner just to satisfy President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC. INEC has made a mockery of itself and the entire electoral process”.
By the PDP’s reckoning, Bello scored only 6,885 votes in the supplementary election, against Wada’s 204,877 votes in the overall election.
Anyway, PDP will have to go to court to prove their special mathematics formula