The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kogi State has attributed its success in the just concluded governorship election to the collective determination of the people of the State to shun ethnicity for the overall development of the state.
The APC also commended party members in Kogi East, where it alleged that opposition parties deployed thugs to deprive members of their franchise, adding that every vote the APC secured in Kogi East “represents hundreds of voters who were harassed, injured and even had their houses burnt for their political beliefs.”
The Director of Media and Publicity/Spokesperson for the Kogi State Governorship Campaign Council, Kingsley Fanwo, who said this at a “Thank You Press Conference”, in Lokoja, on Tuesday, said the resounding victory of the APC had strengthened the social contract between the party and the people of Kogi State.
“It has also upscaled the onus of responsibility on us to continue to provide first class schools, health institutions, road infrastructure and many others that the current administration in the state has been doing over the past 7 years and 9 months,” he stated.
Fanwo said a member of the party was gunned down in Anyigba for standing his ground to choose the Kogi Agenda over what he described as the sectional and divisive agenda of a candidate who had no interest of the state at heart with the “evil narrative of ballot box snatching without providing proof.”
“Those who waged terrorism on our democracy out of desperation to make the impossible possible are today moving from one TV Station to another to cry foul and create a contrary impression when unbiased observers from far and wide have described the election as the freest and most peaceful since the creation of Kogi State. This is the height of desperation to distract our common attention from the heist they committed,” he said.
Fanwo said it was laughable that a candidate who claimed to have won only in his zone was crying foul and calling for the cancellation of the results of the areas where he was massively rejected.
He said, “It is akin to a poor student who scored 20% in a test to call for the cancellation of the 80% he missed to make him score 100%. It is ludicrous, pedestrian, senseless and a dubious attempt to deactivate justice and fairness. In the last 48 hours, the social media has been awash with mutilated and manipulated result sheets in favour of the Social Democratic Party where the original results were rewritten by those who are now coming to equity with unclean hands.
“Their ethnocentric Senior Advocate of Nigeria is already writing essays to convince them to hire him for Tribunal cases. Their immediate past experience where the Supreme Court questioned his knowledge of law will be child’s play as we have enough evidence to prove that the ethnic-centered candidate of the Social Democratic Party actually didn’t score as much as was recorded for him at gun point.
“Our candidate and now the Governor-Elect, Alh. Ahmed Usman Ododo, won election across the three Senatorial Districts while the ethnic agenda candidate claimed to have won in his own Senatorial District alone. He didn’t win any Local Government Area in the West or Central. Ododo won all the Local Government Areas in two of the three Senatorial Districts and went ahead to win one Local Government Area in the East Senatorial District.
“He would have won more in the East but for the daylight robbery of the Social Democratic Party who dangerously attacked members of the All Progressives Congress in the East, leading to the death of one person while many were injured.”
The party thanked the people of Kogi Central for turning out in their thousands to concretise the dominance of the All Progressives Congress in Kogi State, noting that “the massive turnout is no surprise as we witnessed a mammoth turnout during our Kogi Central rally. The numbers that came out to vote showed the rally crowd wasn’t a ruse.”
