James Faleke, the running mate to late Prince Abubakar Audu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Saturday’s governorship election in Kogi State, has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission to declare him governor-elect, Premium Times is reporting.
Faleke made this position known in a letter to INEC, obtained on Thursday by Premium Times.
The letter, dated November 26, 2015, was addressed to the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.
In the letter, Faleke insisted that under Section 187 of the 1999 Constitution, he was duly elected as deputy governor of Kogi State based on the outcome of the election declared inconclusive by INEC.
He thus said INEC had no right under the law to declare the election inconclusive.
Faleke, in the letter by his counsel, Wole Olanipekun, accused INEC of deliberately creating what he called “legal conundrum” and urged the APC not to be a party to the action.
He wrote in the letter: “In law and logic, no new candidate can inherit or be a beneficiary of the votes already cast, counted and declared by INEC before that candidate was nominated and purportedly sponsored.
“Assuming without conceding that INEC is even right to order a supplementary election, the votes already cast, counted and declared on Saturday, 25th November 2015, were votes for the joint constitutional ticket of Prince Abubakar Audu and our client.
“Therefore, no new or ‘supplementary’ candidate can hijack, aggregate, appropriate or inherit the said votes.”
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