Nasarawa Tribunal: PDP Alleges Irregularities, Queries Votes

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) allocated votes to governor Abdullahi Sule of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the March 18 governorship election in Nasarawa State.

The complaints of the PDP emanated from the minority judgment of one of the tribunal’s judges, whose statistics differ from that of INEC.

PDP spokesperson in Nasarawa State, Alhaji Ibrahim Hamza in a statement said INEC owed the citizens of the state clarifications on how it arrived at the number of votes allocated.

Recall that the election tribunal in Nasarawa sacked governor Sule and asked INEC to recognise Ombugadu as the legitimate leader of the state.

According to the statement, the PDP said it is not opposed to the incumbent’s decision to appeal the tribunal’s verdict.

The statement reads: “It is crucial to clarify the reasons behind this appeal, especially concerning the alleged discrepancy in the vote count.

“Whereas AA Sule celebrated and accepted the declaration by INEC that he won the Nasarawa governorship election with 347,209 votes, he is now banking on the minority judgment of the Election Petitions Tribunal, which gave him 295,402 votes as the basis for his appeal.”

As contained in the statement, the PDP recalled how the electoral body claimed that the incumbent won the March 18 governorship election with 347,209 votes and allocated 283,016 votes to Dr Ombugadu of the PDP.

The statement added that the minority ruling by Justice Ibrahim Mashi stated that governor Sule scored “only 295,402 votes as against the inflated votes of 347,209 freely given to him by INEC.”

The PDP said Justice Mashi’s verdict also revealed that Ombugadu scored 291,603 as against the suppressed votes of 283,016 allocated to him by INEC.

The PDP asked: “Where did INEC get the 51,807 votes margin it generously allocated to AA Sule and returned him as the elected governor of Nasarawa State based on the ruling of the same minority judgment?”

When contacted, the chief press secretary to the governor, Ibrahim Adara, said that the state government will issue an official statement (tomorrow) today.