The African Action Congress (AAC) has denied endorsing the “gross malfeasance and fraud” that pervaded the conduct of Saturday November 11 governorship election in Kogi State, while insisting that the process is short of every element of a free, fair and credible poll.
SaharaReporters had reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), declared the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Ahmed Ododo as the winner of the Saturday’s governorship election.
SaharaReporters also reported that residents of Magongo in Ogori-Magongo local government area of Kogi State protested that results had been written on result sheets while accreditation and voting were yet to commence.
The residents who stormed at Magongo RAC centre expressed their displeasure that officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in collaboration with the officials of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had already written results of the various polling units in the local government even before election had started despite all the promises of free, fair and credible election.
The pre-recorded results of some polling units which SaharaReporters obtained showed that APC scored 120 votes while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Social Democratic Party (SDP) were allocated one vote each as their scores in the election that were yet to start.
Sequel to the protest, INEC cancelled the election in 67 polling units in the local government. Despite the cancellation, the electoral umpire went ahead to declare APC candidate winner of the poll.
However, reacting to the report that some political parties including AAC had endorsed the election as free, fair and credible and acceptable to opposition political parties, the leadership of the AAC denied endorsing the charade called election.
AAC in a statement issued on Wednesday said that APC in a desperate move to shop legitimacy for the electoral violence has mischievously listed the party as one of the parties endorsing the charade that took place on Saturday.
The statement partly read: “In a desperate move to shop legitimacy for the electoral violence, the misconduct, gross malfeasance and fraud that occasioned Kogi elections conducted by both INEC and Yahaya Bello, the APC has mischievously listed our party, the AAC as one of the parties endorsing the charade that took place on Saturday.
“We want to state clearly that our party, the African Action Congress did and will not endorse the criminality of Yahaya Bello, his stooge and their party, the APC.
“We maintain that the electoral processes fell short of every elements of freeness or fairness and until power is given based on the freewill of the people, there’s no way bourgeoisie democracy can deliver the aspirations of the people.”