By Michael Egbejule, Benin City
Voters in Edo State, under the aegis of National Coalition of Edo Voters, have vowed to reject candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the March 11 House of Assembly elections in the state to express their displeasure over the alleged manipulation of results of the presidential and National Assembly elections by the party in favour of its candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Speaking at a press conference in Benin City, the group rejected the outcome of the poll, noting that the declaration of the APC candidate as the winner of the poll by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was a rape of democracy.
Convener of the group, Olu Martins, while decrying APC’s desperation to usurp democracy and foist their candidate on Nigerians against their will, urged Edo voters to reject the party at the forthcoming March 11 House of Assembly elections.
He said, “We only had one problem in Nigeria, the APC, but after the election in February, it became two problems – APC and INEC. They believe that after a few days, Nigerians will be tired of the unrest following the declaration of Tinubu as President-elect and go back to their normal lives. We only want INEC to declare the original result of the presidential election.
“We are preparing and shining our eyes for the elections come Saturday, March 11 against the APC and INEC. You can vote for any other party but APC.”
They should not get even one vote from any polling unit. Let’s tell them that after raping us in broad daylight, they cannot come again to kidnap us.
“If there is any misconduct in the coming election, we will march to the INEC office directly. We were taken unawares in the February 25th election.”
A co-convener of the coalition, Christopher Ojeikere, said: “We want to register our strong protest against how Mahmood Yakubu gave our mandate to the wrong person.”
Source: The Guardian
