SUPPORTERS of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Kogi State are still trying to understand how their candidate Abubakar Audu was declared the loser of the December 3, governorship election.According to the Chief Returning Officer of election, former Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin, Prof. Shamsudeen Amali, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Captain Idris Wada got 300, 372 votes as against the 159, 912 votes recorded by Audu. Wada led in 18 of the 21 councils including Yagba West, Yagba East, Mopamuro, Ijumu, Kabbabunu, Lokoja, Kotonkarfe, Ogorimagongo, Okene, Okehi, Ajaokuta, Dekina, Ankpa, Idah, Igalamela/Odolu, Ibaji, Bassa and Omala. Audu won in Ofu, Olamaboro and Adavi.Although the election was hitch-free, Amali said few irregularities witnessed during the election were isolated and did not influence the outcome of the election.On the eve of the election, the ACN alleged that the PDP planned to use thugs dressed as soldiers to rig the election. Election monitors and observers however reported that the election was peaceful while commending the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for improving on the April polls.Dino Melaye, the Chief Strategist of the Abubakar Audu Campaign Organisation, said the outcome was manipulated and that the ACN is would seek legal means to reverse the result. Melaye almost ran out of expletives to describe the result. He called it 'satanic,' 'scientific rigging,' and 'rigging without violence,' while claiming that it does not reflect the aspirations of the people of the state.Melaye said: 'It is pathetic, painful and disheartening that the PDP has graduated from the use of thugs, police, military and other forms of intimidation to 'scientific rigging'. The result announced does not represent the true pattern of votes cast. Seven units were cancelled in Olamaboro because we won there.'The results were manipulated at the council level. The INEC collaborated with the PDP and the Police to make sure that duplicate copies of the result sheets with the same serial numbers were available to the ruling party. And they know that INEC is the principal witness if one challenges the result. I want to assure that we have proofs.'He claimed that the scanty presence of policemen and other security operatives around the polling units was a ploy by the PDP to manipulate the outcome of the election. according to him, after the discovery of anomalies, ACN withdrew its agents and directed them not to append their signatures on the result. The ACN agent also did not sign the result sheet after the final result was announced at the INEC secretariat in Lokoja.But spokesman of the Wada/Awoniyi Campaign Organisation, Chief Tunde Olusunle, said 'the PDP victory was never in doubt on account of the sheer hard work, dedication and commitment invested in the pre-election process by the party. The aggregate effort of all the other parties was not enough to match the PDP's. Having done so much painstaking preparations, victory for the PDP was assured. What many did not anticipate was the margin of the routing which is almost 100 per cent.'Olusunle claimed that the ACN lost because it miscalculated in its choice of flagbearer. He wondered why ACN, which postures as a populist and progressive party, decided to 'impose a bourgeois politician, noted for his exclusivist tendencies. Where is the meeting point''He said, 'Audu, who lost his gubernatorial bids in 2003, 2007 and 2008 was not the best option to fly the flag of any party. The choice of Audu's running mate from Yagba East, next door to Mopamuro where the PDP running mate hails from and which was meant to test the political will of the Okun people, was a misnomer. The ACN overrated its capacity for propaganda believing these were enough to win an election''The PDP state chairman, Alhaji Hassan Salau said PDP did not rig but 'smoked out' ACN from Kogi.'The election was free, fair and credible. The ACN is just making noise after they have lost. Anyway the allegations were well anticipated. We should expect it from a people who lost an election.'Amidst the various claims by the ACN, a former governorship aspirant on the platform of the party, Mr George Olusola Olumoroti said that PDP won and that ACN lost to the rigid authoritarian in the party's national leadership, noting that at the apex of the leadership, there is a lack of internal democracy.According to him, 'the coming of Audu into ACN in July was welcomed with mixed feelings. The apprehension was that Audu was never a democrat so what is he doing in ACN. As soon as he joined the ACN every party member realised that he was in the party to pursue his selfish aim of getting to the Lugard House having realised that ACN had a better structure than the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), which he nurtured and used in previous elections. An anti-Audu sentiment started to brew across the party ahead of the primary, and it was obvious that the stage was set for a woeful outing for Audu.'He disclosed that four days to the primary all the governorship aspirants were invited to Ekiti House in Abuja by the party national leadership of for a meeting, which was chaired by Ekiti Governor Kayode Fayemi. The instruction was handed down that Audu had been nominated as the flag bearer.'The aspirants vehemently objected to the imposition and insisted on the party conducting a proper primary while promising support to whoever emerged. After three days of unsuccessful lobbying, cajoling, and threat, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu came down to the fourth meeting on September 20, to hand down 'the take it or leave it' instruction. He said that he had made up his mind on the candidature of Audu, and that ACN will not hold any primary. We expressed our reservation on the imposition highlighting various reasons Audu will be rejected at the polls. But we were talking to the deaf.'The meeting closed but none of us attended the ratification of Audu's candidature at the ACN secretariat in Lokoja on September 21. From the benefit of hindsight, after the PDP primary saga, Governor Ibrahim Idris, initiated the reconciliation process that allowed Abdulrazaq Kutepa's camp to produce the deputy and explored the Presidency to work on Jibrin Isah Echocho. In contrast, Audu refused to come down from his Olympian heights, and instead of exploring ways to unite the party and seek reconciliation, he aggravated it by alienating the core ACN members by projecting his co-travelers who decamped from ANPP over and above the core ACN members. His deputy, Henry Ojuola, the Director General of his campaign organisation and other positions were selected from ANPP defectors, while the core ACN were marginalised.'Several attempts were made to communicate the doom that was awaiting ACN at the December 3 polls if remedial actions were not taken and on time too. But the pride of Audu and the larger than life mentality of Tinubu did not let them hearken to the words of wisdom. They believed that they knew more than any other person. Now the election is over and the refusal of Audu to accord respect to other people and realise that politics has gone beyond master-servant arrangement, and Tinubu's attitude that his wish must be done at all time in ACN has cost us this election in Kogi.'I hope Tinubu will leave Kogi ACN alone and let us drive our party and chose our candidates in future. We have worked assiduously by investing our time and hard earned money since January 2009 without input from Tinubu or the national secretariat and Audu. I am almost certain that Audu will abandon the party now having failed to achieve his selfish agenda, so that we can rebuild the party again.'A public analyst, Mr. Olusegun Iselaye, described Melaye's claims as mere fallacy. He added that the 'neither Tinubu's nor Audu's style catches anyone's fancy. Their opinions are always too fixated. ACN is gaining grounds today because it is still growing and people have not realised that yet. I am afraid if ACN leaders continue with this kind of 'take it or leave it' attitude, the party will never do well in other states outside the South West geopolitical region. Posterity will tell. Kogi people are not foolish; people are becoming more enlightened daily.'The chairman of INEC, Prof Attahiru Jega described the coinage 'scientific rigging' as ACN's latest addition to Nigeria's political lexicon. He advised ACN to go to court just as the ANPP and CPC flagbearers, Ubolo Okpanachi and James Ocholi respectively lauded INEC's performance.While ANC was looking for reasons it lost the governorship election, other factors have been linked with the victory of PDP. Among the reasons is the fact that the civil servants believed to have turned their backs on the ruling party based on alleged non-payment of relativity and minimum wages were not swayed by the return of Audu based on his antecedents and constant clashes with labour. Also, Audu had lost most of his foot soldiers to the prolonged years of the PDP rule and having contested the elections in 1991, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2011. The feeling was that he should quit the stage and allow other people to be tested.
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