Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state has said the Saturday November 16th election in the state that saw him emerge as winner, should not be discredited because of pockets of violence witnessed during the election.
Bello said this in an interview with Channels TV on Tuesday morning November 19th. Reacting to claims made by many civil society groups including the European Union (EU) that the election was characterized by widespread incidents of violence and voter intimidation, Bello said
“The conduct of the election was quite very credible, a level-playing field was provided and it was free and fair. In every election, there is bound to be one issue or the other and you can’t take a pocket of issues to judge the general conduct of the election.
“Regarding the comment of the civil society organisation, they are entitled to their own opinion but let us know the parameters with which they are judging this election. How many pooling units did they visit out of 2548 polling units, 239 wards and 21 local governments across the difficult terrains of this state? How many people have they reached out to?
“We have over 6000 votes cast, have they interviewed all the electorates? So what are their yardsticks.?”.
