The All Progressive Grand Alliance candidate in Anambra State Central Senatorial District in last Saturday’s elections, Prof. Dora Akunyili, has rejected the victory of Dr. Chris Ngige in the National Assembly election.
Akunyili, who spoke at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, alleged that Ngige, who was the candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria in the election, got his victory in a “fraudulent manner.”
The former Information and Communications Minister spoke as Ngige was holding a road show in Awka to celebrate his declaration as the winner of the senatorial seat.
Major streets of Awka, the state capital, were jammed on Tuesday as the ACN candidate and his supporters held a victory party.
The party held up traffic especially along the Onitsha-Enugu expressway where thousands of ACN supporters brandished brooms and sang victory songs with Ngige.
The celebration, however, attracted a strong police reinforcement around Government House, which is in the vicinity of the home of the former state governor.
Akunyili, who spoke in company with the National Chairman of the party, Chief Victor Umeh, said the attitude of some politicians in the country was aimed at tarnishing the image of the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
She said there was no iota of truth in the allegation by the Returning Officer in the district, Mr. Alex Anene, that agents of the state government tried to induce him with money and other materials.
Akunyili said, “The chairman of INEC is a credible man but politicians want to discredit him. The returning officer said he was induced by the government. Tell me, does Gov Peter Obi look like someone who could spray N10m?
“The governor lives in his mother’s house and Anene is saying that the governor promised to build a house for him among other things. How can someone who does not own a house build house for another person?
Ngige told his teeming supporters that he was now the senator-elect. “What I am waiting for is for the Resident Electoral Commission to issue me with my certificate of return,” he told the cheering crowd of supporters.
He urged them not to be carried away by the celebrations. “Tomorrow, we shall return to work. There are more elections ahead of us,” he admonished.
But the REC, Prof. Chukwuemeka Onukaogu, said the commission stood by the declaration that the election was inconclusive.
Onukaogu, who spoke in Abuja, said the returning officer that declared Ngige as the winner of the election had absconded from his duties and therefore could no longer claim to be the returning officer.
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