Barely 24 hours after Senator Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner of the Saturday Edo State governorship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has vowed to go to court to retrieve its ‘stolen mandate.’
The party’s position was announced by PDP acting National Chairman, Umar Damagum at a briefing in Abuja, where he charged the people of the state “to remain resolute and undeterred as our party takes sure and firm steps to retrieve the mandate with every means legal and available in a democracy.”
Saying the PDP expected the judiciary to ensure justice in the matter, Damagum said: “We cannot overrule a situation where justice will be dispensed but the most important thing is that we shall put them to more scrutiny before the eyes of Nigerians because they say when the judicial system does not work, then you don’t have a country. I don’t know if we will still have a country.
“Several demands by our party for the redeployment of these officials and the release of all arrested PDP members and supporters fell on deaf ears and tended to validate PDP’s suspicion of a top-level conspiracy to rig Edo State governorship election.
“Nigerians and the world watched in horror as the APC-compromised security operatives and thugs unleashed terror, harassed, arrested, and detained PDP members and supporters, foisted siege mentality on the people, and paved the way for APC agents and procured INEC officials to manipulate the ballot process, substitute genuine results from the polling units with fictitious figures and transferred the victory clearly won by our candidate, Asue Ighodalo, to the defeated APC candidate, Monday Okpebholo.
“As Nigerians already know, despite the violence, intimidation, and manipulations by the APC, results obtained from the polling units show that our candidate, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, clearly won the election before the figures were altered at the state collation exercise in favour of the defeated APC candidate.
“The PDP, therefore, unequivocally rejects the final result of the election as declared by INEC as it did not meet the minimum standard for democracy, having not reflected the expressed will and aspiration of the people, in line with provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 and INEC guidelines for the state governorship election.
“The PDP calls on all Nigerians and lovers of democracy the world over to stand up in solidarity with the people of Edo State in rejecting this assault on the democratic rights of the people as witnessed in the election.
“The people of Edo State clearly chose Dr. Asue Ighodalo as the next governor of their state and only their will as expressed at the polling units must be allowed to stand.”
INEC had on Sunday night declared Okpebholo as the winner after polling 291,667 votes, against Ighodalo of the PDP’s 247,566 votes and LP’s Akpata’s 22,763 votes.
