The Social Democratic Party (SDP) has said it is assembling its legal team and available facts to challenge results of last Saturday’s governorship election in Ekiti state in court.
According to the National Chairman, Alhaji Shehu Gabam, the election was fraught with and marred by vote buying and ballot box snatching which if allowed to go unchallenged would derail the country’s democracy.
Gabam who accused President Muhammadu Buhari of compromise for “celebrating the outcome of the electoral fraud”, said should vote buying be allowed to continue unchecked, politicians would no more embark on campaigns but loot the treasury in order to buy votes during elections.
He lamented that Nigeria’s democracy is under threat, calling on well-meaning Nigerians to come to her rescue.
“We expected a very transparent election in Ekiti state, we expected election with human face, we expected election to be full of remorsefulness given the past record we have had in this country.
“Elections were conducted in the 16 local governments and so many security agencies were deployed. We saw a video where a ballot box was snatched and the security agencies were watching doing nothing about it.
“We completely, comprehensively reject the result of Ekiti state election and our legal team is assembling the best facts available, they are putting everything together, we are coming up with a position based on facts available to us and we challenge it legally from bottom to top. We will not allow any inch to escape.
“Above all we thought that the President and the Commander-in-Chief that has made several promises to this country that he wanted to leave a legacy of free and fair election, what we saw in Ekiti is the president chewing back his promise.
“What we saw in Ekiti was the worst of elections in the history of Nigeria. We thought the last elections we saw in Kogi and Bayelsa states were mistakes but seeing the president within a short period of time celebrating his party for winning Ekiti state was quite embarrassing to the country.
“Two, the ground is shifting. INEC is trying the very best to make sure that elections are being conducted under conducive atmosphere , materials were delivered as at when due but what we saw from the videos, from the pictures that were available to everybody, the media including the NGOs, the international community was an election that was invaded by vote buying.
“The danger is that next election that is coming majority of the people will not bother to campaign, they will concentrate in looting public treasury and those who have other criminal ways of making money will stock their money, just wait for election day, not bother about the process,they will just buy voters. There is no great danger to democracy than what we saw in Ekiti,” he said.
Also speaking the governorship candidate of the party in the election, Engr. Segun Oni, agreed with the party chairman, adding that the county belonged to all and should be rescued from the hands of those seeking to destroy it.
Oni said if democracy is allowed to to be butchered, Nigerians would be be biggest loser.
