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A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Dauda Lamba has vowed that the party would expose all the “shoddy and shady dealings plus the electoral fraud” he alleged were perpetrated by the Plateau State Independent Electoral Commission during the Local Government Election conducted in the state on October 9, 2024.
Lamba, a former Commissioner for Information in the state, spoke with Arewa PUNCH in Jos on Sunday while confirming that his party had filed petitions before the Local Government Elections Petitions Tribunal constituted after the polls.
According to the APC stalwart, a situation whereby an electoral body would promise to conduct a credible election but later turn around to subvert the will of the electorates would no longer be tolerated in Plateau State.
Lamba stressed, “It is very important that our leaders, particularly our political leaders start thinking and maintaining virtues of modesty, honesty, sacrifice, empathy, and godliness in the discharge of their private and public leadership roles.
“The leaders must begin to see themselves as spring board for massive social changes with an enduring clear national perceptions about attaining national goals, national peace, unity and progress of their fatherland both at the state and national levels,” he stated.
He continued, “I have been in government since 2001 and before then, I served as Secretary of a local government in 1992, and I want to say that of all the LG elections held in Plateau State, the trend of irregularities and non compliance with the electoral laws has been the same.
“Like the last LG election that held on October 9, the law says that all elections, including the chairmanship should be held and concluded and winners declared within the Local Government for Councillors at the ward level and for the chairmanship at the LG level.
“But they never declared the results of the councillorship at any of the wards, and they also did not declare any of the winners at the chairmanship level at the LG. All the results were declared in Jos, which is not in tandem with the extant laws
“As a matter of fact, there were no electoral officials to collect and receive the results from the polling units and declare results at the ward collation level. The process requires that ward collation officers collate results from all the polling units of the wards, tabulate them, and announce the winner for the councilorship. Those for the chairmanship candidate will now be transmitted to the local government headquarters where other results from the LG wards will be collated as well, and results announced. Unfortunately, the election officers were not allowed to do their jobs. That part was not done.
“What they did was just to declare anybody they chose as having won an election. So, the last LG poll is not an honest and sincere test of the execution of the electoral process
because it is at the whims and caprices of PLASIEC to declare whosoever they want to declare wether APC, PDP, LP or YPP. They know how they made the declaration.
“For instance, will it not be very embarrassing to you to say that all the 20 councillorship wards in Wase LGA, the home of APC, were won by the PDP candidates. As far as we are concerned in Wase, where we are on ground and monitored everything, there was no fair deal in what transpired. From the report that we got in other LGAs, it is the same shameful thing that played out. We are going to expose everything.
“We have filled our petitions before the election tribunal and we believe that justice will be done in the matter for the sake of the people of Plateau State who have been clamouring for the entrenchment of genuine democracy in our electoral process.
“With the preponderance of evidence that we have and which we are going to use to prove our case at the tribunal, I’m confident that we will get justice at the end of the day.”
However, the state electoral body has come out to defend the conduct of the LG poll, describing it as free, fair, and credible .
The Chairman of the Commission, Plangji Cishak who insisted that no political party or candidates were shortchanged through out the electioneering process said, “We have discharged our duties in a free, fair and credible manner in line with the extant laws and mandate given to us as a Commission. Those who won were declared accordingly. What is left is for them to serve the people of Plateau State who elected them into power.”
