By Austine Emmanuel, Kaduna
Women in Kaduna state have called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) to review the results of the last Saturday’s gubernatorial election that produced Senator Uba Sani of the ruling All Progressive Congress, (APC) as Governor elect of Kaduna state.
The protesting women in their black attire stormed the Kaduna Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, (NUJ) with placards on the inscription: “restore our mandate, Give us who we voted, No to result manipulation, Kaduna people have spoken” among others, claiming that everybody is aware PDP won the election.
Recall that the Kaduna state returning officer, in the just concluded gubernatorial election, Prof. Lawal Suleiman Bilbis on Monday night, declared Uba Sani as winner of the election with 730,002 against PDP’s Isah Ashiru, who polled 719,196.
Speaking with journalists at the scene of the event, former PDP Woman Leader, North West Comrade Aishatu Madina said the will of the good people of Kaduna state was surmounted by the ruling party in collaboration with INEC, whom she accused of deliberate refusal to follow its guidelines using the Electoral Act.
Madina disclosed that the verifiable results in the INEC Result Viewing Portal, (IREV) shows that PDP won the election despite deliberate effort put in place to cancel polling unit results in their strongholds.
She further stressed that the number of cancelled votes as an aftermath of the poll is much higher than the margin that INEC used in declaring Uba Sani as winner, maintaining that they expected the Electoral umpire to at least declare the election inconclusive pending when fresh elections are conducted in the affected areas as stipulated in the INEC guidelines, but the commission ignored its own provision.
She said the results declared do not reflect the choice of the majority of the good people of Kaduna state, reiterating that everybody including the state governor and the governor-elect knows that the opposition won the election without any contradiction.
Madina said, “The result is verifiable at the INEC server and I urge everybody to please go and verify it. They deliberately cancelled our votes upon that we won the election and what we expected from INEC is to at least declare the elecption inconclusive and then order fresh poll in the affected areas, meanwhile INEC ignored everything and went contrary to their own provisional guidelines.
“Democracy gives Kaduna residents the opportunity to choose who governed them and that is why the federal government spent over 300 billions to ensure the biomodal Voters’ accreditation machine, BVAS are used for the transparency of these results. So if INEC still go ahead to collate results manually it means the money spent on BVAS is a waste and we Nigerians will not allowed that to happen.
“IReV is nobody’s property. It’s not PDP that invented the technology. So for INEC to ignore the law they made by themselves is unbecoming of them and we Nigerians will not take it likely.
“Kaduna is not for one person, it is not for one particular religion or tribe. So what we are looking for is state integration and we will not agree for anything nor anyone to divide the people further because even with all the resources they deployed they could not convince the people to vote for them. So why won’t they allow the person we voted for to emerge for the good of everybody?”
The woman Leader disclosed that they have written to INEC to review the results on the INEC portal.
Meanwhile PDP is critically looking at the the process after which they will approach the law court to seek legal redress if the right things are not done.
Also, speaking with journalists shortly after the protest, the Secretary, Atiku Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCO) Kaduna state, Prince Gbenga Owojjaiye said that INEC is also part of the robbery, alleging that they are no longer an Independent umpire, hence subjected to government in power to do their biding.
Owojjaiye stressed that, “As party stakeholders, we are law abiding citizens but we don’t know what the masses will do because they are the ones that voted. We will do everything possible within the law to restore our mandate,” he said.