Kogi State Chapter of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, says the results of the elections as claimed to have been scored by Natasha Apoti from the Central Senatorial District is unacceptable to it.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had earlier declared the Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Yakubu Oseni, as winner of the just concluded Kogi Central Senatorial election.
Oseni, who was the immediate past Chairman of Kogi State Internal Revenue Service, won four out of the five local government areas in the district, defeating the incumbent, Senator Ahmed Ogembe, and Natasha Akpoti who came close.
Announcing the result, INEC returning officer for the senatorial district, Professor Patrick Amidu Audu from Federal University Lokoja, disclosed that the APC candidate polled 76,120 votes to beat Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, Natasha Akpoti, who polled 48,326 votes.
Sen. Ogembe however polled 19,359 votes to come third.
Reacting to the result announced by INEC on Sunday, the Kogi Social Democratic Party chairman, Muktar Atima, on Monday, said the party does not believe in the election results, describing it as an election marred by lots of irregularities and most unacceptable to the party.
According to the Chairman, “the Kogi State Governor turned himself to an electoral officer, moving round and collecting form EC8A from one polling unit to another and filling it himself.
”The action of the governor is laughable as the accreditation by the card readers did not tally with the vote cast, so how can such results hold.
” This is not an election because he cannot use his position, those of his aides and security agencies to intimidate people.
” We are worried by the hurried nature by which the results were cooked up. How can you imaging Natasha scoring zero in polling units where even the PDP would have more votes than we do.”
The SDP Chairman however called on members of the SDP and supporters of Natasha Apoti to remain calm, as the purported results that were allocated to SDP cannot stand.
While asserting that the SDP Senatorial candidate is the winner of last Saturday’s election, the Chairman said their candidate’s popularity and acceptance were widely acknowledged, just as he wondered how an unacceptable figure would be allocated to the SDP candidate.
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