Governor Gabriel Suswam of the People’s Democratic Party has petitioned against the return of All Progressives Party’s Senator Barnabas Germade as winner of Benue North-East Senatorial Zone in the Saturday, March 28, 2015 general elections.
Benue state’s National and State Houses of Assembly elections petition tribunal sitting in Makurdi, have been petitioned through the Governor’s counsel, Mr. Andrew Wombo who said that the challenging of the outcome of the election was due to failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission, to keep to electoral guidelines in the conduct of election.
“After the polls, we applied for the inspection of the election materials and INEC availed us the certified true copies and after going through them, we discovered that the actual winner based on what transpired at the polling units was Governor Suswam and not Senator Gemade.”
“We discovered that at three Wards in Logo LGA, elections were conducted and the results from the said polling units entered in the relevant INEC forms duly signed by the electoral officers in the said Wards, but to our greatest surprise the result was not entered in the final result that INEC declared.”
“Also at Mbaiwarnyan Ward, in Konshisha LGA, out of 21 polling units, INEC collated results in only four and no explanation was given as to why collation was not done in 17.
“Though the presiding officer entered the results from those polling units; we then put these results from the 17 with those of Logo and we discovered that Governor Suswam had the highest number of votes cast.
“We have therefore approached the Tribunal to include the results in the final collation, because on our part we fell that they omitted them and they should be added up and a declaration made,” Wombo said.
