Faleke to Oyegun: I won’t surrender people’s mandate

The crisis created by the demise of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in Kogi State’s governorship election, Prince Abubakar Audu, seems to be growing fast.

Audu’s running mate in the November 21 election, James Abiodun Faleke, has declined to pair with Alhaji Yahaya Bello, who has been named the party’s candidate for the supplementary election on Saturday, insisting that he should be declared governor-elect on the APC platform.

The APC looked set to win the election but the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared it inconclusive, following the inability of some registered voters to vote in 91 units.

In a letter to APC National Chairman Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, Faleke dissociated himself from the supplementary poll, which he insisted was unnecessary since the November 21 governorship election produced the candidates of the APC as clear winners.

He said rather than substitute its late standard bearer at the governorship election for the purpose of a supplementary election, the party ought to have urged 

the electoral umpire to declare it the winner of the poll since the expected results from the scheduled election would be inconsequential.

In the 91 units, there are 49,000 registered would-be voters. Of the lot, only 25,000 have voter cards. The APC is leading by 41,000 votes.

“Please take this letter as confirmation to dissociate myself from the unusual and strange supplementary nomination of my humble self as running mate to Alhaji Yahaya Bello, this also serves as a notice of rejection of the purported and illegal nomination of myself as running mate to Alhaji Yahaya Bello,” Faleke wrote in the letter to Odigie-Oyegun.

He said it would amount to a betrayal of trust and injustice on the part of the party to pick Bello who, according to him, joined forces with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against the APC during the election, as the inheritor of all the late Audu and himself put into the campaigns to ensure victory for the APC.

Besides, Faleke faulted the APC for attempting to shave his head behind him, claiming that no one consulted him before his name was forwarded as running mate to Bello.