THE former member House of Representatives for Gwarzo/Kabo federal constituency, and candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Nasiru Sule Garo, has rejected the election results recently announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
He annouced his reaction Sunday night at an emergency press conference in Kano following the declaration of his opponent from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner by INEC after a polling unit in his constituency was cancelled due to overvoting.
He complained that the action taken by INEC after it was observed that there was overvoting in the polling unit, when they added the result of the cancelled polling unit contradicts the Electoral Act.
He therefore stated that he along with his party will reclaim what he describes as the “stolen mandate of the people”.
“I represented the NNPP in the just concluded elections. I am here purposely to reject the results of the elections as declared by INEC.
“I am rejecting this result because I am actually the one that the people actually voted for to represent them at the National Assembly.
“However, there was massive collaboration between the state government, the security agencies and the INEC in which they wemt and changed all the results.
“We actually have two physical evidences that involves collaboration and non collaboration between the security and INEC.
“Firstly, the Electoral Act is clear on overvoting. What it says is that if there is overvoting in a polling unit even with one vote, that polling unit should be cancelled.
“More so, my agent who was there and insisted that they cannot include that polling unit and have to cancel it based on the position of the Electoral Act, the APC people who insisted that they must add it and include it i n their result, becausenof his insistence, the collaboration with the state government and the security agencies, the Orderly of the former commissioner of local government mobilised security agents and arrested my agent around 3:00am, brought him to the state police command detained him and left him there.
“This means that I was left in that polling unit without an agent. We just got him out of their hand through bail. This is a clear collaboration between security agencies and the state government.
“Secondly, that of INEC is that if there is cancellation of polling unit and you bring the voted that were cancelled, automatically if the cancelled votes are abobe the margin between the two leading candidates, that result has to be declared inconclusive.
“In my own case, there are cancellation of polling units and the number of voters that are in that polling unit are above the difference between me and my opponent but they went ahead and. declare that result thereby declaring the looser as the winner.
“We have other clear evidences which we will not reveal to the press at the moment. We have to go back and reclaim the victory. It is not for me or the NNPP, is for the people who voted, the good people of Gwarzo-Kabo constituency.
“The people have given me their mandate but the security, state government and INEC have stollen their mandate.
INEC had announced the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Mu’azu as the winner after disqualifying the NNPP candidate.