By Musa Yaro, Calabar
#NigeriaDecides2023 – Despite its victory in securing the presidential seat including two Senate and five House of Representatives positions across the state at the just concluded general elections, the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Cross River says, it rejects the outcome of the Northern senatorial results so announced.
The northern senatorial district is the home of the incumbent Governor Ben Ayade who lost the senatorial elections to the present occupier, Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe.
Addressing newsmen at the Murtala Mohammed party secretariat in Calabar, Thursday, the state party chairman, Barr Alphonsus Eba, said that there is an avalanche of evidence bordering on irregularities, criminal intimidation, and terrorist activities.
“We are challenged with a senatorial seat which from the preliminary report I can boldly say will soon be taken over because of the avalanche of evidence at our disposal on the irregularities, criminal intimidations, and terrorists activities that were precipitated against innocent electorates of our party with full video proofs and roles played by some non-state actors in collision with some unprofessional security agencies,” Eba said.
The state APC chairman who described the declaration of Jarigbe as the winner of the senate seat in the senatorial district as “a pyrrhic victory that will evaporate into thin air,” argued that, “not only were there issues of manipulation of votes, votes exceeding the number that were accredited in the BVAS, even scientifically one single person will drive voters that were accredited and one finger will be thumb printing ballot papers.
“We are confident that the man who sits today and deceives himself to have been returned as the Senator in the north will prepare to meet us in the proper phantom and fountain that is allowed for us to ventilate our points,”
He asserted that the party and its faithful reject in totality as it is not only contesting, but will take it to the highest level that the law permits even as he enjoined party supporters not to take to the streets but follow the path of law.
Calling on the relevant security agencies to investigate and prosecute its men for alleged unprofessional conduct during the said elections, Eba said
“Our party leaders in Okuku, Yala local government area have fingered the role played by retired AVM Clement Ogbeche who used his privileged position to take over in illegal consonance some professional Army that was deployed to do their work in their professional calling but decided to allow their hearts to be taken by these criminal collisions and illegal arrangement.”
The state party chairman further admitted that on the election day proper and in his polling unit in Yala local government area, “the same criminal elements came with that kind of intimidation but they met my physical firepower and ran away for their dear life even with their arms.”
Worried by the Supreme court nullification of the APC House of Assembly seat for Yala 1 a few days ago with no order for a fresh primary before the March 11, 2023 election while offering the party a no candidate to fly its flag, Eba informed that the party has accepted the order of the apex court and the faithful prepared to go to the field.
“There are hands of friendship being stretched from both ends and at different levels. The parallel line between us and the PDP as far as the 2023 election is concerned, will never meet mathematically even at infinity, we will therefore be disposed to open up discussion with Labour Party and other political parties,” he assured.
On his part, an APC chieftain and a former aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, Obono Obla, called on the President as well as the military authorities to discipline or court-martial those who deployed soldiers during the electioneering period without the consent of the governor.
According to Obla, “these soldiers went about brutalizing, harassing, and dehumanizing law-abiding citizens.”
