By DADA AYOKHAI
The people’s Democratic party,PDP , candidate in the March 18 State Assembly election for Etsako west Constituency 2 , Dr. Felix Iyalomhe, seems to be orchestrating some of his supporters to protest against the INEC declaration which gave victory to the APC candidate .
According to the results of the Etsako West Constituency 2 election announced by the electoral umpire, INEC, the PDP candidate , Iyalomhe scored 7,432 while Gani Akokhia of the All Progressive Congress APC got 11,751
After the announcement of the results, the PDP candidate claimed he was the rightful winner and that INEC erred to have announced Mr Gani Akokhia of the APC as the winner of the March 18 election
Dr. Iyalomhe is a well-known political ally of the Edo State deputy governor, Hon Phillip Shaibu .
Dr. Iyalomhe and Hon Shaibu jointly addressed the protesters at the Azama Primary School, Jattu, where they emphasized their claim of a stolen mandate and enjoined INEC to quickly take steps to redress the injustice that was meted out to the PDP candidates in the local government area.
The protesters also claimed that a similar injustice was meted out to them in the Etsako West Constituency 1 election where Princess Otse Momoh of the PDP was trounced by Hon Hussein Lecky of the APC.
The protesters later stormed the INEC office in Benin, demanding a review of the Etsako Constituency 1 and 2 results declared by the electoral umpire
According to them, the available results from the various polling units across the constituency show that the PDP candidates secured the highest number of votes cast during the election, and wondered why the INEC will go ahead to declare the wrong persons as the winner
They pointedly accused Comrade Adams Oahiomole and the Edo State commissioner of Police of working hand in gloves to thwart the PDP victory, adding there are proofs of the security agents being used to rig the election for the APC
Reacting to the protest, Mr Akokhia, the APC candidate who won the Etsako Constituency 2 election, dismissed the protest with a wave of his hand, saying the protesters were a “bunch of rented crowd” to create the impression that the PDP candidate was popular whereas the results of the election show otherwise
He challenged the state deputy governor to address the issue of over-voting which took place in his polling unit and led to cancellations instead of chasing the cloud, insisting that both Hon Shaibu and his lackey, Dr. Iyamlohe, are sour losers.
