The Social Democratic Party’s candidate for governor of Kogi State, Mr. Muritala Ajaka, has claimed that the collation centers’ results sheets in the Ogori Magongo region of the state are missing.
In a statement, Muritala—through his media assistant, Mr. Faruk Adejoh-Audu—said that the occurrence was a sign of irregularities in the current election.
He said that he was told of purported electoral malpractices by his agents spread around the state.
Ajaka said, “Our agents who went to a few ward collation centres in the early hours of this morning to inspect materials before accepting to take them to polling units discovered that no result sheets were available for any of the units or ward collation centres.
“In Olamaboro Ward 5 where agents of all parties escorted the Supervisory Presiding Officers, Presiding Officers and other INEC staff with security to the ward headquarters in Inele-Ugo last night, they went back to commence deployment of the materials to the polling units this morning and discovered that the entire INEC staff, materials and the security personnel have all disappeared from the Roman Catholic Mission Primary School where they left them.”
The candidate also alleged that an All Progressives Congress Council Chairman was caught by security agents, with thugs ferrying large amounts of cash in the early hours of Saturday and paraded by the security agents but was later freed.
“These developments signpost reports of outrageous malpractices and manipulations that are already emerging from several areas across the state.
“Our situation room is also inundated with reports of INEC IT staff and some ward collation officers camped in three Lokoja hotels overnight to manipulate BVAS Machines and pre-fill result sheets of Lokoja, Ajaokuta and Kogi LGAs.
“There are reports of thugs riding on motorbikes to evade the checkpoints of soldiers to attack remote polling units in Dekina, Ofu, Olamaboro, Bassa, and Ankpa LGA.
“We are immediately drawing the attention of the INEC National Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, the Returning Officer for Kogi State, Election observers, local and international and head of security agencies to these outrageous electoral breeches and demanding that the commission keeps to its vow to reject results from areas that have been compromised by violence, malpractice or manipulations,” he stated.
