Dino Melaye Reacts To Kogi Election Results

Dino Melaye, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Kogi West Senatorial rerun, has referred to the results as ‘fictitious.’

Naijaparry understands that
Melaye needs more than 14,500 votes to defeat Smart Adeyemi and return to the Nigerian Senate as the representative of Kogi West.

Nigeria’s electoral body, INEC, has announced results from five of the seven local government areas in the district and Adeyemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won four, leaving Melaye of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with one.

While Adeyemi emerged winner in Kabba Bunu, Kogi, Mopa-Moro, and Ijumu areas, Melaye got the better of his rival in Yagba East.

In Kabba, Adeyemi got 15,037 votes, while his PDP rival had 8,974, just as the APC candidate got 4,874 votes in Mopa-muro, leaving Melaye with 3,704.

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And in Kogi/Koton Karfi, the APC candidate recorded 14,168 votes, with Melaye getting 9,766, while in Ijumu, where the two rivals hail from, APC secured 11,627, while PDP got 7,647 votes.

But Melaye got 7,745 votes in Yagba East, while Adeyemi polled 6,683.

The electoral body, at the time of publishing this report, was still awaiting results from the remaining local government areas – Yagba West and Lokoja.

Speaking in Abuja on Sunday, Melaye said that the November 16 election was marred by compromise, extreme violence, and rigging.

“The innovation is that what we had is what I have christened ‘Helicopter election’. For the first time, rigging has been advanced to the level that now the use of a helicopter in perpetuating this electoral atrocity manifested yesterday,” he said.

“Helicopter hovering around Polling units in Lokoja, dropping bullets on innocent, harmless citizens and electorate…”

According to Melaye, the violence witnessed in his community should give the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) reasons to stop the collation of results on Sunday.

He said, “Despite the fact that this helicopter was used in harassing, intimidating and firing innocent electorates, the votes of those places were carted away and taken to the government house, stuffed and brought back to the collation centre and they have been accepted and admitted and collation is ongoing.

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“They brought mayhem on my own community and even killed my nephew, we are waiting to see what INEC will do, but I reject in totality, this fictitious result and I want to say that all these are not about the election, it is about Dino Melaye.”

The Court of Appeal had, on 11 October, annulled Melaye’s victory in the February election and ordered a rerun.

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