The People’s Democratic Party, Nasarawa State, has queried the Independent National Electoral Commission over votes allocated to the state governor, Abdullahi Sule of the All Progressives Congress during the 2023 governorship election in the state.
The PDP also noted that while it respected the right of the governor to appeal the tribunal judgment which declared its candidate, David Ombugadu, as the winner of the governorship election, it needed clarifications from INEC over the votes allocated to Sule.
In the statement signed by the state’s PDP spokesperson, Ibrahim Hamza, the party noted that INEC owes citizens of the state clarifications on how it arrived at the number of votes allocated to the incumbent.
“As firm believers in our democratic process, we respect the right of AA Sule to appeal the judgment of the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal, which nullified his declaration as governor by the Independent National Electoral Commission and returned David Ombugadu as the duly elected governor of Nasarawa State.
“However, 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.”
The statement read in parts, “It will be recalled that INEC, in March 2023, claimed that AA Sule won the governorship election with 347,209 votes and it allocated 283,016 votes to Ombugadu of the PDP.
“But in his minority judgment, Hon. Justice Ibrahim Mashi ruled that AA Sule scored only 295,402 votes as against the inflated votes of 347,209 freely given to him by INEC. The same minority judgment said Ombugadu scored 291, 603 as against the suppressed votes of 283,016 allocated to him by INEC.
