The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for the Edo governorship election, Asue Ighodalo, has said that he would go to a tribunal to reclaim his “stolen mandate”.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, Ighodalo declared that his party avoided buying votes during the election and more than 160 polling places failed to use the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
Ighodalo finished second with 247,274 votes in the recently concluded election, while Olumide Akpata, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), finished third with 22,763 votes, while APC candidate Okpebholo was declared winner of the September 21 election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) after receiving 291,667 votes.
“There is a lot of data, information, evidence that we have. We are fully confident that going through the tribunal, we will win the case,” he said.
“We will regain our mandate and we are clear without any doubt that we were the winners of the election last Saturday.
“We didn’t rig. When APC and INEC saw that APC was losing woefully, they then subverted the electoral laws and the guidelines.
“Collation is done at the polling units, and then you go to the ward, and then the local government collation center, and then the state. There was a jump, from the ward straight to the state.
“There was a collusion between the INEC and the police to suppress the will of the people of Edo state. The people of Edo state purposely voted for us. We won the election.
“It is painful because many young people felt disenfranchised in the past; they felt that their votes were not counted and they asked what kind of democracy we run.
“I had been trying to encourage them to make sure your votes count but we have serious collusion by INEC and the APC working towards votes not counting.
“But this time around we will go through the judicial process and the vote will count. We are quite clear that with our evidence, we will show that we won the election. And the mandate of the people will be upheld.”
Ighodalo stated that the PDP was not pleased with the vote-buying scandal that dominated the election.
“I can state categorically, we were not involved in vote buying at all. APC agents came with minted notes straight from the CBN and they were offering N25,000, N30,000, and N50,000 per vote,” he added.
“What our guys did was to go to them and harass them and tell them that you can’t come here to buy votes. But we were not engaged in vote buying in any way. I’m clear about that.
“We didn’t even need to go and buy votes. The people of Edo state were solidly with us. It’s only when you’re not sure of your capabilities… when you cannot perform that you do underhand things.
“And APC, through this election, with the connivance, complicity, and support of INEC, undermined the whole democratic process.”
Ighodalo stated that accepting Monday Okpebholo’s offer of friendship is out of the question.
“Because the mandate is stolen, there is no way you can accept these hands of fellowship or friendship,” he said.
“I will stay with the people of Edo state, who fully gave me the mandate of their free will, and I will go into the courts and the tribunal to reclaim our mandate and then form the government.”