The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been accused of working in connivance with the All Progressives Congress (APC) governor-elect in Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, to input the name of another running mate into its record.
The running mate to the late All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Alhaji Abubakar Audu, Hon. James Faleke, had declined his party proposal that he should stand as the deputy governorship candidate to Bello after INEC declared the election inconclusive and ordered supplementary election in some polling units.
Raising the alarm yesterday, a civil society organisation and election monitoring group, Conscience Nigeria, alleged that there were plans to fill in the name of a running mate different from Hon. James Faleke, into INEC official documents and backdate it as a way to prove to the Kogi State Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Lokoja that Bello actually fulfilled constitutional provisions by running the supplementary election with a deputy.
An insider source in the Faleke camp hinted that the issue of who stood in as the deputy governorship candidate to Bello was one of the legal strong point with which the lawmaker hopes to prove his case against the Bello candidacy.
Section 187 sub-section 1 of the 1999 Constitution is very emphatic and states in unequivocal terms that any Governorship candidate for an election will not be deemed to be duly elected if he fails to run the election with a Deputy.
With Faleke’s letter to APC and INEC refusing to be Bello’s deputy and opting out of the supplementary election, the question is how Bello would beat the trap of section 187 of the constitution since he actually ran the election without a deputy.
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