Hon. James Abiodun Faleke
The deputy gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the November 21 election in Kogi State, James Abiodun Faleke, has warned his party and the Independent National Electoral Commission against compromising his mandate in the state.
In two letters written through his counsel Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) to INEC and the APC on Wednesday, December 2, the aggrijeved politician informed both parties of the court case he instituted and vowed not to betray the late Prince Abubakar Audu by surrendering their joint victory.
Faleke told the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, that he was “not ready or prepared to negotiate, compromise, surrender, mortgage or part, in any way whatsoever, with the mandate already given to the said joint ticket by the electorate of Kogi State.”
He again pleaded with the APC not to submit his name “as an associate or running mate to any person or newcomer into the supplementary election which INEC is proposing to hold in 91 polling units on December 5, 2015.”
The 91 polling units, Faleke emphasised, have only 25,000 prospective voters with Permanent Voter’ Cards (PVCs) and that INEC’s declaration of the election as inconclusive was “a mystery.”
Faleke told the APC leadership that “as a man of conscience” he did not want to betray the late Audu by assigning their joint mandate to any person, “particularly Mr. Yahaya Bello, who engaged the late Prince Abubakar Audu in a war of attrition throughout the primary election and continued to mount a campaign against him till he passed on.”
He claimed that Bello jumped ship after losing out at the party’s primary election.
“Immediately after the primary election was conducted, Mr. Yahaya Bello defected from the APC to the Social Democratic Party (SDP),” Faleke alleged.
Bello, he added, did not participate in the electioneering which he and the late Audu embarked on “throughout Kogi State”.