The All Progressives Congress, APC, has denied reports that its Deputy Governor-elect of Edo State, Philip Shuaibu, threatened the Collation Officers for Etsako West Local Government Area, Professor Adewole Atere, when the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was collating the results of Wednesday’s Governorship poll in the area.
Earlier, the APC Governorship candidate in Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, was declared winner of Wednesday, September 28, governorship polls, after polling 319, 483 votes to beat his closest rival, Osagie Ize-Iyamu of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who got 253, 173 votes.
Shuaibu, who represents Etsako federal constituency in the House of Representatives, also denied leading armed thugs to harass any electoral officer.
Professor Atere, during the presentation of election results from the 18 local government areas had alleged that he and another INEC official, were asked by Shuaibu to manipulate the result sheet.
He said: “It was the same candidate of yours who accosted the CO in Unit 11 with about six guns and drove him to the corner of the collation centre, forcing him to mutilate. I did not mutilate any paper; my papers are here.
“Number two, this same candidate went to INEC office to repeat the same thing and later came to the collation centre where I served with 10 gun-toting men, threatening to kill all of us.
“I want to say that this same candidate told the man, who handled Ward 11, that he was a dead man”.
However, Shuaibu dismissed the allegations, saying they were shocking and false.
He said: “I was shocked when I watched it on TV; I was wondering if it was somebody else that was talking. Everything he said was completely the opposite to what happened. And thank God that the DSS, police and other security agents were there when all these things were done at the collation centre.
“It started at the ward collation centres, when the young man working with INEC made a mistake in his calculation and our agents drew his attention to the mistake and he corrected them.
“But at the level of the local government level, the PDP wanted to take advantage of it, that those units must be cancelled. The same collation officer that went on air lying that I was harassing him with a gun is the same man who promised that the matter would be sorted out in Benin.
“So, we left the collation centre with the mindset that we were leaving for Benin to take a decision on the matter, because the duty of the collation officer in that ward was to collate what was given to him and not to cancel and there was no element of single violence in my unit that would result to issue of cancellation of any result”.
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