The All Progressives Congress has described as baseless the call by the Peoples Democratic Party that its candidate be declared the winner of the inconclusive Osun State governorship election.
The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said the party’s candidate, Senator Ademola Adeleke, should be immediately declared winner of the election.
But Yekini Nabena, the APC National Publicity Secretary, said the party rejected the PDP’s demand.
“We hereby reject the PDP’s baseless calls that the inconclusive Osun governorship election is announced in its favour,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
Nabena called on Osun State electorate, party supporters and members to remain upbeat and focused on the task of consolidating on the APC change administration in the state in the lead up to the re-run election.
This, he said, they should do by voting for the victory of Gboyega Oyetola, the APC governorship candidate.
He applauded Osun State electorate, INEC, security agencies and relevant stakeholders over the conduct of the election, noting that the election was largely peaceful despite some reported irregularities.
The APC spokesman said the party would continue to improve on its electoral processes, particularly correcting some irregularities witnessed in the election.
He commended President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration for continuously exhibiting its commitment to ensure that elections were more peaceful, transparent, credible and acceptable.
This, Nabena added, was a departure from the situation under past PDP administrations where the people’s will was subverted and elections were often manipulated.
The PDP had at a news conference in Abuja on Sunday rejected the declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission that the governorship election was inconclusive.
Prof. Joseph Fuwape, the Returning Officer for the September 22 election, made the declaration in Osogbo.
Afuwape, who is the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, while announcing the results of the election, said Adeleke scored 254,698 votes, while Oyetola polled 254,345 votes.
He said the election was declared inconclusive because of cases of ballot boxes snatching that occurred in some polling units during the election.
The returning officer mentioned the affected polling units to include Ife North (one polling unit), Ife south (two polling units), Orolu (three polling units) and Osogbo, one polling unit.
He said a total of 3,498 votes were cancelled in the seven affected polling units
INEC has fixed September 27 for the re-run election.
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