SAN FRANCISCO, June 25, (THEWILL) – Embattled lawmaker representing Kogi West, Senator Dino Melaye, has claimed that the signatures allegedly collected to influence his recall and forwarded to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, were forged.
Addressing newsmen on Sunday in Lokoja, he posited that the process was fraudulent, stating that investigations had revealed that even the dead signed the recall petition across the seven area councils of the senatorial district.
The Senator, who spoke through one of his legislative aides, Malam Abubakar Sadiq, disclosed that the move was hatched in the Government House in Lokoja.
Stating that the names and signatures of dead constituents were on the list, he said the name of a former governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state, late Chief Rotimi Obadofin precisely from Iya-Gbede axis was on the list.
“Let me also sound authoritatively that here in Lokoja Local Government Council, several others whose names and signatures appeared on the list of the signatories to this failed exercise were identified and known to us as being dead long before now.
“Such people like late Abdullahi Abubakar, his immediate younger sister late Halima Lawal Abubakar and Ibrahim Adama of Unit Code 021, Adankolo Ring Road in Ward ‘A’, Lokoja Local Government Council.
“Also one late Salihu Black of Gegu-Beki town, Kogi Local Government Council who until his death was a biology teacher in Government Secondary School, Koton-Karfe, also appended his signature on the recall list.
“This recall exercise was hatched in Kogi Government House due to the manner in which Senator Dino Melaye consistently challenges and engages the government over non-payment of workers’ salaries and pensioners for over 15 months; and also the constant closure of tertiary institutions,” he stated.
Melaye also alleged that they claimed to have gotten over 188,000 signatories of electorates in Kogi West when the total vote cast, both valid and rejected, in the last senatorial election of 2015, was merely 111,000 for all the candidates that participated.
