Melaye: Kogi West constituents storm INEC, seek his recall

AS part of the process for the recall of embattled Senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye, certain chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who claimed to be from his constituency on Wednesday stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) secretariat in Abuja.

Led by Olowo Cornelius, who incidentally is from the same Ijumu local government area with the embattled Senator Melaye, they submitted what they described as collated signatures from the seven local council areas in Kogi West senatorial district. The councils are Ijumu, Kabba/ Bunnu and Mopamoro. Others are Lokoja, Yagba West and East and Kogi Local Government Areas.

Addressing newsmen, Cornelius declared that the collated signatures represents 52.3 of the total number of registered voters in the senatorial zone which he put at 343,146.

Giving an insight into the collated signatures, alongside the petition submitted to INEC, Cornelius accused Senator Melaye of poor representation of his constituents, lack of interaction and alleged indecorous behaviour unbecoming of a lawmaker.

He said: “There is no constituency project to show that somebody is representing us in the last two years.

“There is no interaction, there hasn’t been one town hall meeting in the last two years and there has been a major gap between the senator and the people of Kogi West.

“Again, the Senate is supposed to be a place for responsible individuals, not a place of rancour and tyranny. We have tolerated him in the last two years but we cannot continue to keep quiet.”

He also dismissed insinuation of the involvement of Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello in the orchestrated plot to recall Senator Melaye.

“The governor cannot play any role. He is from Kogi Central, not Kogi West. This is a collaboration of efforts of people who played a role in his emergence as senator. It is the people that are directly affected that are involved in this case.”

Speaking with Nigerian Tribune, Rotimi Oyekanmi, Chief Press Secretary for INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, however, said he was not aware of the development.

“I don’t know who collected the letter from them, so I cannot speak on it.”

Meanwhile, the Commission has restated its commitment to electronic collation of votes and announcements of election results at polling units.

Speaking when he met a delegation of the executive of Computer Professionals Registration Council, led by their Registrar, Mr Allwell Achumba, Professor Yakubu said his leadership was committed to deployment of information technology to make its job easy.