Please Declare Me Senator-Elect, Defeated Senator Begs Election Tribunal

Senator George Akume, whose bid for re-election in the February 23 general elections failed, has claimed he won the senatorial election for Benue North West and should be declared winner.

Akume and his All Progressives Congress, APC made the claim in their 336-paged petition before the Governorship, National and State Assembly Elections Petition Tribunal in Makurdi, Benue State.

In the petition to the tribunal’s secretariat in Makurdi, the APC senator said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) erred to have returned his major opponent, Emmanuel Orker-Jev of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as winner of the election.

On the other hand, Akume and APC said if the tribunal would not declare him winner, it should order fresh polls where elections did not hold or were marred by violence or irregularities.

He cited polling units within Buruku, Guma, Gboko, Gwer West and Gwer East registration areas/wards as examples of such places.

Majority of Benue West senatorial district had on February 23 National Assembly election appeared to have rejected Akume as their representatives at the Senate as they gave Orker-Jev of the PDP 157,726 votes, which was higher than 115,422 votes Akume got.

But Akume and his party, who are now challenging the result, stated in their petition that they will rely on 118 witnesses to prove their case.

The case is premised on two grounds; first, that the first respondent (Orker Jev) was not duly elected by majority of lawful votes; secondly, that the election was invalid by alleged corruption and non compliance with Electoral Act 2010.

They also stated that different letters of complaints they wrote to INEC or its agents while the elections were ongoing were neglected.

Part of their claims read, “The total number of accredited voters as recorded in Forms EC8C(1), EC8D(1) and EC8(1) by INEC agents manually are higher than the accredited voters recorded in the Card Reader Accreditation Sheet for the Presidential and National Assembly Elections, held on 23rd day of February, 2019.

“The number of votes cast in the local government areas of Buruku, Gboko, Guma, Gwer East, Gwer West, Makurdi and Tarka are higher than the number of accredited voters in each of the local government area above mentioned.

“Some polling units in Buruku, Gboko, Guma, Gwer East, Gwer West, the total number of votes cast at the election far exceeded the total number of the PVCs collected by voters in those polling units and registration areas.”

Akume was governor of Benue State between 1999-2007. He contested for the senate seat for Benue North West in 2007 after completing his two tenures as governor. He re-contested in 2011 and 2015 and won. He however lost his reelection bid in the 2019 general election for the first time in about twenty years of his political journey.