The Kogi State All Progressive Congress (APC) has said the success it recorded in the just concluded governorship election is due to the the collective determination of the people to shun politics of ethnicity for the overall development of the state.
Kingsley Fanwo, the state commissioner for information , communication and strategy stated this at a press briefing in Lokoja on Tuesdays, as he thanked voters for turning out massively for the candidate of the party , Usman Ahmed Ododo during the governorship election held on Saturday November 11.
The APC also commended party members in Kogi East, where it alleged that opposition parties deployed thugs to prevent them from exercising their franchise.
He added that every vote the APC secured in Kogi East represents hundreds of voters who were harassed, injured and even had their houses burnt for their political belief.
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Fanwo who doubles as the Director of Media and Publicity /Spokesperson for the APC Kogi State Governorship Campaign Council pointed out that the resounding victory of the party has strengthened the social contract between the party and the people of Kogi state .
“It has also upscaled the onus of responsibility on us to continue to provide first class schools, health institutions, road infrastructure and many others that the current administration in the state has been doing over the past 7 years and 9 months,” he stated.
The party spokesman accused the Social Democratic Party of sealing off the homes of many APC chieftains, stopping them from voting on election day.
He noted that a member of the party was gunned down in Anyigba for standing his ground to choose the Kogi agenda of a candidate who had no interest of the “evil narrative of ballot box snatching without providing proof.
“This is a clear crime against democracy. Our agents were attacked and their tags seized and many of them were barred from accessing collation centres,” he said.
“Those who waged terrorism on our democracy out of desperation to make the impossible possible are today moving from one TV Station to another to cry foul and create a contrary impression when unbiased observers from far and wide have described the election as the freest and most peaceful since the creation of Kogi State”.
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Fanwo said it was laughable that a candidate who claimed to have won only in his zone was crying foul and calling for the cancellation of the results of the areas where he was massively rejected.
“It is akin to a poor student who scored 20% in a test to call for the cancellation of the 80% he missed to make him score 100%,” he said.
“It is ludicrous, pedestrian, senseless and a dubious attempt to deactivate justice and fairness.
“In the last 48 hours, the social media has been awashed with mutilated and manipulated result sheets in favour of the Social Democratic Party where the original results were rewritten by those who are now coming to equity with unclean hands”.
