Ighodalo Vows to Reclaim ‘Stolen Mandate’ at Tribunal, Cites BVAS Failures in Edo Poll

Asue Ighodalo, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Edo governorship poll, says he would reclaim his “stolen mandate” at the tribunal.

Speaking on Politics Today, a Channels Television programme, on Thursday, Ighodalo said his party did not partake in vote buying during the election.

Ighodalo explained that his legal team identified over 160 polling units where the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) was not deployed.

“There is a lot of data, information, evidence that we have. We are fully confident that going through the tribunal, we will win the case,” he said.

“We will regain our mandate and we are clear without any doubt that we were the winners of the election last Saturday.

“We didn’t rig. When APC and INEC saw that APC was losing woefully, they then subverted the electoral laws and the guidelines.

“Collation is done at the polling units, and then you go to the ward, and then the local government collation centre, and then the state. There was a jump, from ward straight to the state.

“There was collusion between the INEC and the police to suppress the will of the people of Edo state. People of Edo state purposely voted for us. We won the election clearly.

“It is painful because you have many young people who felt that they were disenfranchised in the past; they feel that their votes were not counted and they asked what kind of democracy we run.

“I had been trying to encourage them to make sure your votes count but we have serious collusion by INEC and the APC working towards votes not counting.

“But this time around we will go through the judicial process and the vote will count. We are quite clear that with the evidence we have, we will show clearly that we won the election. And the mandate of the people will be upheld.”