Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged it was cheated in the September 22 governorship election in Osun State.
The PDP, which had earlier rejected the declaration of the Osun governorship poll as “inconclusive,” by the Independent National Electoral Commission, said it would file a suit, today, to compel the electoral body to declare its candidate in the election, Sen. Ademola Adeleke, as the winner.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, at press conference, in Abuja, on Tuesday, assured that the legal suit, notwithstanding, Adeleke will participate in tomorrow’s supplementary election.
Ologbondiyan claimed that the PDP has evidence that the electoral body, through its operations and the ICT Department allegedly doctored results from the polling units during the September 22 governorship poll and short-changed its candidate of no fewer than 4,387 votes.
He said facts at the disposal of the opposition party indicated that the PDP candidate actually won the election with a margin 4,740 votes, against the 353 votes declared by INEC.
“The PDP has facts on how INEC slashed over 1000 votes cast by the people for our candidate, Adeleke, in Ayedaade Local Government Area, just to reduce our votes from our legitimate 10,836 votes cast at the polling centers to 9,836 votes so as to give APC the lead with a 1,000 vote margin in the local government.
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“Also, the PDP has evidence of how INEC, while collating results, directly allocated over 1,367 fictitious votes to the APC in Olorunda Local Government Area. This is in addition to evidence of how INEC awarded over 2,000 fictitious votes in favour of the APC in Oshogbo to push APC’s vote to 23,379 against the actual 21,479 votes scored by the defeated party.
“Such writing of results by INEC in collusion with the APC occurred in many other areas leading to INEC’s ill-fated directives to its junior officials, including the one apprehended in Ayedaade, to destroy results already displayed at polling and collation centers.”
Besides, Ologbondiyan accused the electoral body of increasing the original number of voters in the polling centres where supplementary election would hold by 850, stating that it is a ploy by INEC to manipulate the poll, using uncollected Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).