Ahead of the June inauguration of the 10th National Assembly, a fresh crisis is brewing over the last senatorial election held in Niger South Senatorial District of Niger State.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had declared Peter Ndalikali of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as winner of the Senatorial election last February. Declaring the results, Prof Abubakar Muhammad-Bitagi, Niger South Senatorial District Returning Officer, said the PDP candidate won with 100,498 votes.
Ndalikali defeated his closest rival, Senator Muhammad Bima-Enagi of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), who scored 97,453 votes. The APC candidate is the incumbent senator of the senatorial district. The senatorial district includes Bida, Lavun, Edati, Mokwa, Gbako, Katcha, Agaie and Lapai local government areas.
Weeks to the inauguration of the next National Assembly, the Senator representing Niger South Senatorial District, Enagi, has urged the Niger state election petition tribunal to declare the February 25 Senatorial Election in Niger South inconclusive.
The Senator is requesting for a supplementary election to be conducted because, according to his claims before the tribunal, there were several polling units where the BVAs were not used while in other polling units, there were disruptions to the elections due to violence.
According to the counsel to Senator Enagi, Kolawole Olowookere who spoke during the preliminary hearing of the election tribunal said that Peter Jiya Ndalikali of the PDP who was declared the winner by INEC did not win the majority of votes insisting that there is a margin of lead principle.
He said the total number of votes canceled due to BVAS malfunction, violence, and destruction was more than the margin of votes between APC’s Enagi and PDP’s Ndalikali.The PDP and INEC in their different responses called on the Tribunal to strike out and dismiss the applications of Enagi as it fails to comply with the procedure of the tribunal.
The Chairman of the Tribunal, Justice Angela Ataluko adopted all responses and answers of the petitioners and the respondents saying that hearing notices would be issued soon.