By Yemi Oyeyemi, Abuja.
The Social Democratic Party SDP and its governorship candidate in the November 11, 2023 election in Kogi State have asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ignore the call by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Kogi State government to stop the inspection of materials used for the conduct of the poll.
SDP while dismissing the request by APC and Kogi for cancellation of the inspection said that such a request cannot override the order of the Court for the inspection exercise.
The party in a statement issued in Abuja by its Governorship Campaign Council Spokesperson, Faruk Adejoh-Audu maintained that the request by APC and Kogi for inspection cancellation was not only strange and panicky but baseless in view of the subsisting order of the Court for the inspection of the election materials.
APC through the Kogi State Commissioner for Information, Mr Kingsley Fanwo had called on INEC to stop the legal team of SDP and its governorship candidate from being further allowed to inspect the materials used for the November 11, 2023 governorship election.
Fanwo had among others, claimed that the inspection exercise ordered by Kogi State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal would give undue advantage to the opposition party in the raging legal battle on the election.
However, SDP in the statement said the call by the APC and Kogi was nothing but a mere desperate ploy to truncate its petition from being heard within the statutory 180 days life span of the petition.
The party alleged that the Kogi State government had in November last year, dressed some political thugs in SDP’s T-shirts and mobilized them to the INEC office to make a similar call for the cancellation of the court’s ordered inspection exercise.
SDP claimed that for the first time in Nigeria’s history, materials used for state elections had to be spirited away to Abuja to prevent sponsored thugs from destroying them and foisting a fait accompli on the judicial review process.
The SDP statement read in part “Once more, 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 with the hope of further delaying the process.
“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.