Dogara rejects cancellation of Tafewa Balewa LG results

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has condemned the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to cancel the Tafawa Balewa local government governorship election results in Bauchi state.

Dogara said Monday in Bauchi that the decision to cancel Tafawa Balewa LGA by INEC was against the provision of the law.

According to him, the decision lacks substance as elections in the state was “conducted in a free, fair and transparent manner” urging INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu to rise up to defend his people.

“There was no problem at all in Tafawa Balewa. The only problem they had was the final collation. If that was the only problem, one will think that the worse decision that can be taken is for them to provide the relevant collation sheet to her (collation officer) and say go and complete the collation and bring it in the proper sheet.

“But in law, anybody who is a lawyer knows that the issue of form does not defeat the issue of substance

“Now, the substance is that there was a fair, free and credible election, which nobody is challenging. The only issue is that it wasn’t conveyed in the proper form and that can be cured and so, as it is, this election has been won and lost, no matter how you look at it and the PDP, Kauran Bauchi is, by the grace of God, the sitting governor-elect.

“As it is now, there is no problem, absolutely no problem with the votes from Tafawa Balewa.

“If they had cancelled any result at the level of unit collation or ward collation, it would have stood cancelled but for there to be peaceful elections, free and fair as attested to by the local government returning officer, Mrs Dominica Anosike, for there to be very peaceful, transparent collation of all the results across the eleven wards in Tafawa Balewa and the only challenge we had was that the Governor’s thugs and boys went and invaded the local government collation centre and carted away some result sheets.

“Thereafter, the returning officer who collated it on a separate paper, and then wrote a letter, an explanatory memoranda to the state returning officer and the Resident Electoral Commissioner to say that this was the situation in which they found themselves and that was why they had to use another result sheet to do the computation,” he said adding that thugs that invaded the collation centre in Tafawa Balewa were agents of the governor.

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