From the Kogi State government has come a declaration of its readiness to have one of the State’s Senators, Dino Melaye, removed from the Upper House of the National Assembly.
Controversial Melaye has been at the centre of a running battle to have the State Governor, Mr. Yahaya Bello, removed from office for his alleged many sins, including being registered twice as a voter. Bello has denied this claiming the INEC may have registered a ghost of his the second time.
Melaye has boasted that attempts to remove him will fail, but the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) is reporting that the state government is claiming that it has the signature of 52 % of voters in Melaye’s senatorial district to initiate a recall.
A total of 188, 588 voters, representing 52.3 per cent of the total number of registered voters in Kogi West senatorial district have approved the recall of Melaye, according to the Special Adviser to the state governor on political affairs, Mr Pius Kolawole on Monday in Lokoja while addressing party members from the district.
According to NAN, Kolawole said that the collation of signatures of voters to that effect was carried out successfully on June 17.
He commended voters in the district for turning out en masse for the exercise, saying that Section 69 of the 1999 constitution backed their action.
“In 2015, we voted for Dino and now we are using the same method to return him home,” he said.
Announcing the result of the collation, the Returning Officer, Mr Adamu Yusuf said that 188, 588 out of the 360,098 in the senatorial district endowed Melaye’s recall.
While giving the breakdown of the result per the seven local governments in the district, Yusuf said that 18, 374 of the total number of 35,331 registered voters in Yagba East approved the recall.
Others are 9, 186, out of 18,356 voters in Mopa-Muro local government, 24, 703 out of 46, 810 voters in Yagba West, 63,736 out of 116,296 in Lokoja Local Government and 24,283 out of 46,819 in Ijumu Local Government.
In Kabba/Bunu Local Government, 28,277 out of 60, 520 voters endorsed the recall, while 24,703 out of 46,810 voters in Kogi Local Government voted for move to recall Melaye.
According to Yusuf, with this, the next move is to submit the document to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the next action.
INEC had said last week that it required 50% of signatories to initiate the recall process.