Barrister Kefas Magaji
By ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for the Bogoro/Dass/Tafawa Balewa Federal Constituency in last Saturday’s election, Barrister Kefas Magaji, has rejected the result which announced the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ja’afar Leko as winner of the election.
Magaji, a former Special Adviser on Legal Matters to the Bauchi State Governor, who was speaking with journalists at a press briefing at his residence, alleged that the election was flawed and marred by irregularities, adding that he was robbed of the victory at the election.
He also alleged that it was the grand plan of the APC to twist the election in favour of its candidate which was the reason the collation center was suddenly relocated from Zwall town to Bununu in Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area.
The one time Caretaker Committee Chairman of Tafawa Balewa LGA, said: “The election was peaceful, voting was done peacefully in all the polling units with the exception of few areas that experienced challenges due to the non-appearance of electoral officers.
“But where we had problem was in the area of collation of results. My constituency consist of three LGA – Dass, Tafawa Balewa and Bogoro, and there are 31 electoral wards.
‘However at the time of collation, 30 of the wards brought in their results in good time because immediately after the election, counting started and late in the evening (on Saturday), results started coming in. Surprisingly, in Bununu ward which is the host of the three LGAs, results were delayed.”
He narrated further that: “The next morning which was Sunday, results were turned from the remaining electoral wards of the LGAs but Bununu ward was not turned in until about 6 to 7 pm on Sunday which was very unusual.
“The venue of the collation center was so tight as there were thugs around and entrance was mounted with a heavy barricade which made it impossible for anybody to know what was happening. From reports, they collated the results about five times; surprisingly, when the Collation Officer took the results of the three LGAs to the collation center in Bununu, the results were returned on grounds that the computations were not properly done and that there were so many errors.
“For the first time, instead of allowing the Presiding Officers who are the masters of election results to compute the results, the Electoral Officer for Tafawa Balewa took over the whole exercise and at the end of the day, they came up with a result that was not in consonance with the votes that was cast in that ward.”
Magaji stated that before the Bununu result was released, they made sure that “thugs were recruited who were fully armed with AK-47 rifles, cutlasses and machetes. It was at that time, they brought out the result from Bununu and it was late in the night when they knew that bringing in the result at the time they were supposed to bring it in, APC will definitely lose that election. So what they did was to ensure that the election result was delayed and that is the area that we are not so comfortable with”
According to him, despite the delays and the “manipulations that they did in the election result,” they discovered that there were cases of over-voting, alleging that instead of cancelling the results because of the over-voting, they refused
He vowed that he would seek redress at the Election Petition Tribunal in order to reclaim his “stolen” mandate.
“From the entire results they announced, the APC candidate got about 1,800 votes over me, but if they had counted the votes genuinely, certainly by all standards, I would have won the election.
“For me, we are taking up this matter before the election tribunal to ensure that this case is pursued through the legitimate means in order to reclaim my mandate” he said.
