Bello cannot secure Kogi’s ‘stolen mandate for his puppet’

By Faruk Adejo Audu

Once more, Nigerians have been inundated with the crude and relentless crusade of the outlaw government in Kogi State to ignite a phantom controversy aimed at discrediting the judicial review of the electoral heist in Kogi on November 11,2023 with hope of further delaying the process.
One Kingsley Fanwo, the junta’s commissioner of information who has been officially declared a purveyor of falsehood and rumour by the kingpin of the outlaw government, Mr Yahaya Bello, on Tuesday called on INEC to override the order of the Kogi State Elections Tribunal directing that the legal team of our candidate be allowed to inspect the materials used for the elections.
The Kogi Government outing on Tuesday is the latest in several desperate acts to discredit, undermine or all together truncate the tribunals process to allow the puppet and cousin of Mr Bello, one Ahmed Usman Ododo to escape with the Peoples mandate as a booty of the brazen electoral heist of the November 11 Governorship Elections.
In the course of this judicial review, Mr. Bello and his security collaborators in Kogi State on November 29, 2023 went to the bizarre extent of costuming over 500 thugs in SDP T-shirts and deploying them to INEC to prevent the Inspection of the materials as ordered by the tribunal.
They have unsuccessfully unleashed gunmen to assassinate the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) on December 1, 2023 and also ordered an attack on the Secretary of the Election Tribunal by gunmen on December 6, 2023.
So desperate and brazen were these attacks which everyone knew was being orchestrated by Mr Bello who revels in his reputation as a violent man, that for the first time in Nigeria’s history, materials used for state elections had to be spirited away to Abuja to prevent an outlaw in government from destroying them and foisting a fait accompli on the judicial review process.
The Tribunal was forced to adjourn indefinitely on November 30 until its order to allow the SDP Candidate inspect the materials was complied with.
The outbursts of Mr. Bello on Tuesday through his officially disavowed purveyor of falsehood calling for a halt of the inspection of the said materials must therefore, be understood by Nigerians as a sustenance of their crusade to not only discredit the process, but also waste the statutory time of 180 days provided for the tribunal of first instance to adjudicate on an election petition.
But they have failed. The SDP petition will be prosecuted within the statutory time despite their desperation to avoid judicial accountability by engaging in all kinds of criminality to truncate the process.
We challenge this gang of outlaws holding Kogi State hostage to discard the shenanigans and submit themselves to judicial review to see if the brazen electoral heist of November 11, 2023 can survive the least minimum scrutiny.
Attempting to assassinate officials of INEC and the tribunal and the deployment of thugs to delay the process or falsehoods to obfuscate the issues will not save a stolen mandate. The clock is ticking.

Faruk Adejoh-Audu is
Spokesman,
Social Democratic Party Governorship Campaign Council
Kogi State.