Enugu Federal Constituency Rerun: Labour Candidate Optimistic Of Victory

Hon Dennis Agbo, the lawmaker that represented Igbo-Eze North and Udenu Federal Constituency of Enugu State in the 10th Assembly until court ordered a rerun in some of his polling units, Wednesday, expressed optimism of winning the election in the forthcoming rerun.

Agbo won on the platform of the Labour Party. The candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Mrs Oby Arji, contested the results in 176 polling units where the results for her party were not recorded. The Appeal Court, therefore, granted her prayers and ordered a rerun in the affected units.

According to Agbo, the margin he is leading other contestants is still intact, adding that he would emerge victorious. He said the APC candidate scored zero in the affected units and blamed INEC for leaving the spaces blank in the result sheets.

His closest challenger, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Hon Atigwe, according to Agbo, would fail because ‘people don’t like PDP’, adding that ‘PDP will be thought a lesson during the election’.

He said, “The Appeal Court ordered a re-run at 176 polling units out of 532 polling units, which is just less than 30 per cent of the polling units in the constituency. What happened was that one of the parties that contested the election, the APC, complained that in those polling units, that the results of their party were not recorded in the result sheet, not the ballot papers. The fact is that those places were where they got no votes. INEC just left it blank. They forgot to write zero for APC. They then complained that their votes were not recorded. The vote they got was zero, but it needed to be recorded. We are going back to do the re-run in those places.

“There are about 357 polling units that are intac, and the votes there are intact. My votes there are about 22,600. The PDP candidate’s votes are 10,000. APC has just 961 votes. It means I am ahead of the PDP candidate by about 12,500 votes.

“The margin with which I went to the House of Representatives was over the double the votes of my closest rival. I got 28,870, the next person got 14,300. So I passed the person by up to 14,500 votes. This time around, I am only going to add to that margin as I am already passing them by 12,500. Let them also know and believe they have been given a fair hearing.”

On allegations of possible rigging by the PDP, Agbo said, “The truth is that many terrible things have happened in the Nigerian elections. People are believing and thinking the worst. But we are not leaving such speculations without being attended to. Our eyes are open to make sure nobody springs a surprise.

“This is because this election is just a mere formality to give some people a sense of belonging, and yet they are parading all manner of stories here and there to intimidate the people. It is very laughable. This is because they couldn’t do it in the main election with 532 polling units.

“It appears PDP has not learnt a lesson that people don’t like them anymore, but we shall teach them once more. Their time for governance is over, and they will never, under my watch, come back to government again.”