Buhari Disagrees With Election Observers On Kogi, Bayelsa Polls

President Muhammadu Buhari has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agencies “for discharging their responsibilities under difficult conditions” in the Kogi State election, while absolving them of alleged connivance with some politicians to rig the election as observed by election observers.

YIAGA Africa, which participated in the November 16 Kogi governorship election as an observer group, had called on INEC to cancel the election on the account of alleged intimidation of voters and polling officials, ballot box snatching, vote buying, accreditation of people without using card reader and violence and attack on observer groups that partook in the polls.

Speaking also on Saturday’s Bayelsa governorship election, the observer group said the results declared by INEC differed significantly from the figures they collated from polling units in the election.

YIAGA Africa had suggested that INEC officials and security agents aided some politicians to rig both elections.

But speaking in a tweet congratulating Governor Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for his re-election, President Buhari said “It was a race well run and a victory well won,” while commending INEC and the security agents for functioning under “difficult conditions”.

Buhari added, “The violence that took place, and loss of lives, by thugs doing the bidding of their political sponsors, is condemnable. There is no room in our democracy for electoral violence.”

Reacting earlier to INEC’s declaration of APC’s David Lyon as winner of the Bayelsa governorship election, the president commended the Bayelsa people for “generally exercising their right to vote in a peaceful manner, notwithstanding the violence in some areas.

Buhari, who regretted that the violence led to some deaths, said “Violence during elections vitiates our commitment to demonstrate to the world and upcoming generation that we are a people capable of electing leaders in a peaceful and orderly manner.”

INEC had announced that Lyon scored a total of 352, 552 votes to defeat PDP’s Duoye Diri who had 143, 172 votes.

In Kogi, the electoral umpire declared that Bello polled a total of 406,222 votes to defeat Musa Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party, who scored 189,704 votes.

Meanwhile, the national leadership of the APC has commended the people of Bayelsa and Kogi for “the hard-fought election victories,” describing its party’s victories are as significant and well-deserved.

“Our Party’s victory in Bayelsa State is even more of a landmark. Against all odds and in defiance of the established but retrogressive political order since 1999, Bayelsans decided through their votes to overwhelmingly elect our governorship candidate, David Lyon,” the APC said in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu.

“Bayelsans decided to ditch the disastrous regime of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and pitch their tent with a progressive platform. This a sacred trust our candidate and party will not take for granted,” said Issa-Onilu.

On the reported violence in the elections, the APC said “there remains much to be done in ensuring the sanctity of our electioneering process.”

The ruling party said “the PDP must begin to address itself to the new reality that votes are beginning to count. PDP’s retrogressive tactics of massive thumb printing, ballot box snatching, vote buying, thuggery, violence and other illegal schemes will no longer win elections for them.”

Meanwhile, the PDP had said Nigeria was “sliding back to the era of dictatorship” following its candidates’ defeat in the Kogi and Bayelsa governorship polls.

“Nigerians and the entire world watched in horror as the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government trampled our democracy under foot with an utmost impunity that can only be obtainable in Hitler’s Germany and Samuel Doe’s Liberia, where the lives and rights of citizens meant nothing to suppressive power mongers,” the party in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan.

“Citizens agonized as APC-controlled security forces aided armed hoodlums to invade polling centers, shoot and kill innocent citizens, cart away ballot boxes, stuffed them with already thumbprinted ballot papers in favour of APC, after which results are allocated to the APC and handed over to a compromised Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to announce against the will of the people,” said PDP.