The Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its governorship candidate in the November 11, 2023 election in Kogi State, Murtala Yakubu Ajaka, have asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to disregard the call by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Kogi State government to halt the inspection of poll materials.
While rejecting APC and Kogi’s request to cancel the inspection, SDP stated that such a request cannot override the Court’s decision to conduct the inspection.
In a statement issued in Abuja by its Governorship Campaign Council Spokesperson, Faruk Adejoh-Audu, the party maintained that the APC and Kogi State government’s request for inspection cancellation was not only strange and panicky, but also baseless in light of the Court’s ongoing order for the inspection of election materials.
The APC, through the Kogi State Commissioner for Information, Mr Kingsley Fanwo, had asked INEC to prevent the SDP and its governorship candidate’s legal team from inspecting the materials utilized for the November 11, 2023 governorship election.
Fanwo, among others, argued that the inspection exercise ordered by the Kogi State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal will give the opposition party an unfair edge in the heated legal dispute over the election.
However, the SDP stated in a statement that the APC and Kogi State government’s demand was nothing more than a desperate tactic to prevent its case from being heard within the constitutional 180-day time frame.
The party claimed that the Kogi State government disguised some political thugs in SDP T-shirts and mobilized them to the INEC office in November last year to make a similar appeal for the cancelation of the court-ordered inspection process.
According to the SDP, materials used in state elections had to be taken away to Abuja for the first time in Nigerian history to prevent sponsored thugs from destroying them and imposing a fait accompli on the judicial review process.
“Once again, Nigerians have been inundated with the crude and relentless crusade of government in Kogi State to ignite a phantom controversy aimed at discrediting the judicial review of the electoral heist in Kogi on November 11, 2023 in the hope of further delaying the process,” said the SDP statement.
“One Kingsley Fanwo, the commissioner of information who has been acting as a purveyor of falsehood and rumour for the Kogi State government on Tuesday called on INEC to override the order of the Kogi State Elections Petition Tribunal directing that the legal team of our candidate be allowed to inspect the materials used for the elections.
“The Kogi Government outburst on Tuesday is the latest in several desperate acts to discredit, undermine or all together truncate the Tribunal’s process to allow the puppet and cousin of Mr Yahaya Bello, one Ahmed Usman Ododo to escape with the peoples mandate as a booty of the brazen electoral heist of the November 11 Governorship Elections.
“In the course of this judicial review, Mr. Bello and his security collaborators in Kogi State on November 29, 2023 went to the bizarre extent of costuming over 500 thugs in SDP T-shirts and deploying them to INEC to prevent the Inspection of the materials as ordered by the tribunal.
“So desperate and brazen were these attacks which everyone knew was being orchestrated by Mr Bello that for the first time in Nigeria’s history, materials used for state elections had to be spirited away to Abuja to prevent state government from destroying them and foisting a fait accompli on the judicial review process.
“The Tribunal was forced to adjourn indefinitely on November 30 until its order to allow the SDP Candidate to inspect the materials was complied with.
‘The outbursts of Tuesday through purveyor of falsehood calling for a halt of the inspection of the said materials must therefore be understood by Nigerians as a sustenance of their crusade to not only discredit the process but also waste the statutory time of 180 days provided for the tribunal of first instance to adjudicate on an election petition.
“But they have failed. The SDP petition will be prosecuted within the statutory time despite their desperation to avoid judicial accountability by engaging in all kinds of criminality to truncate the process.
“We challenge the Kogi State agents to submit themselves to judicial review to see if the brazen electoral heist of November 11, 2023, can survive the least minimum scrutiny.
“Attempting the deployment of thugs to delay the process or falsehoods to obfuscate the issues will not save any attempt at self-help”, the statement said.
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