The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, in the April 11 election in Nasarawa State, Mr. Labran Maku, has alleged that the witnesses presented by Governor Tanko Al-Makura and his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, turned against them at the Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Lafia.
The former Minister of Information, who was speaking at a press briefing in Abuja yesterday, claimed that Al-Makura, APC and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, could not prove their case at the tribunal when to their shock and disappointment, their witnesses either testified against them or failed to show up.
While commending the actions of the witnesses, who he noted, were compelled by the fear of God not to sell their conscience despite enormous monetary inducement, Maku said: The rural people in Nigeria still have conscience even with money as they are not prepared to lie on oath. It shows that Nigerians could be truthful and have conscience and that testimony by his own witnesses to tell the truth in spite of monetary persuasion is the victory I hold dear. I am not going to pre-empt the outcome of the tribunal but I trust the judges who are of good conscience to do justice.
“You can’t have your own witnesses turn against you and still expect to be declared a winner. Clearly I have proven beyond doubt that I won the election and this has not been disproved by either INEC or Al-Makura. Of course I won the election very clear. We are not expecting a cancellation of election but a declaration that we won the elections.”
The present National Secretary of APGA continued that unlike the APC, his team was able to present “a factual rendition of the card reader that exposes that most of the areas which returned APC winner were fraudulent, clear over-voting.”
This was as he claimed that: “During the governorship election, in some places no one signed the results, no dates and no official stamps. So what you see is alteration of results, mutilation and cancellation of results APGA won, over voting for APC, and clear violation of the electoral processes is an indication that APGA won.”
Maku said INEC had boasted to provide 25 witnesses to the tribunal “and even came with statements of the witnesses on oath only to come around to say they have no witnesses.
His words: “The information we heard is that there is confusion and commotion that the witnesses refused to turn up because they don’t want to lie on oath. It’s now on record that the electoral body that declared Al-Makura the winner could not even bring a single witness to defend its actions.
“On the other hand, we presented 49 witnesses whose accounts showed that the April 11 election was won by APGA at the polling units level, only to be upturned at the collation level. What we have is voter manipulation and in other areas, there was over voting in favour of the APC or cancellation of APGA results. What we did was to hire a certified statistician who reconstructed the authentic results to show that APGA won.”
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