The Peoples Democratic Party in Kaduna State has rejected the election results as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The state INEC Returning Officer, Prof. Lawal Suleiman Bilbis, from Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto, had announced the All Progressives Congress candidate, Senator Uba Sani, as the Governor-elect in the state, after polling 730,002 votes, while his closest rival, Isah Kudan of the Peoples Democratic Party polled 719,196 votes.
The Labour Party governorship candidate, Jonathan Asake polled 58,283 coming a distant third, while the New Nigeria Peoples Party candidate, Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, came fourth with 21,405 votes.
However, on Tuesday, while addressing a press conference in Kaduna, The PUNCH reported that the state chairman of the PDP, Felix Hyet, described the APC victory as a “daylight robbery”, alleging that INEC was complicit in denying the people of the state what they actually voted for, and was inconsistent in declaring results.
Hyet said, “You will recall my press conference yesterday, March 20, 2023, during which I demanded the use of authentic results from the INEC Result Viewing server as the only accepted results for declaration of governorship in our state.
“This was because the lack of transparency from INEC officials was glaring and justice will not be done.
“Our fears were confirmed last night when the State Gubernatorial Returning Officer, Prof. Lawal Suleiman Bilbis, used the questionable results to declare Sen. Uba Sani of the APC as elected with 730,002votes against 719,196 votes allocated to our Candidate, Rt. Hon. Mohamed Ashiru of the PDP.
“The PDP rejects this result and the declaration of Sen. Uba Sani as winner of the governorship elections of 18/03/2023 in our dear Kaduna state.
“May I seize this opportunity to sincerely thank our numerous supporters and the good people of Kaduna state for the mandate they have given us and want to assure them that the PDP will not leave any stone unturned in the quest for re-claiming their mandate.
“We have commenced actions necessary and in accordance with the law with a view to arrest this glaring broad day robbery against the people of Kaduna state by APC government and its collaborators.
“Certainly, there are different ways of taking action but all would be according to the laws of the land.
“We have rejected the result and we would take all measures that are lawful to reclaim the mandate of the people of Kaduna State.
“The system of collection of result was very untidy and unreliable. Figures kept on being changed. At that time we said people had gone to Lere again, and to Kudan. To ascertain what? Another result or what? Therefore whatever we have seen and whatever that have been declared, we feel it is allocated.
“This is because since INEC has server, that result had gone into that server and this server is under INEC control and custody. There is no reason why INEC will not make use of the authentic result in its server to avoid this broad day robbery that has been meted on the people of Kaduna state.”