Sen. Dino Melaye
The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Kogi West senatorial election, Dino Melaye, has faulted the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (ACP), Adams Oshiomhole for his comments on the poll.
Senator Melaye, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, stated that Mr Oshiomhole has no power to decide his fate in the November 16 election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared the election inconclusive after Senator Smart Adeyemi of the APC polled 80,118 votes as against Senator Melaye’s 59,548, with a margin of 20,570 votes.
Addressing a meeting of APC National Executive Council (NEC) in Abuja on Friday last week, Oshiomhole said his party looked forward to winning the Kogi West seat in the upper chamber of the National Assembly.
According to him, Melaye is at 20,000ft below ground level and he is hoping that there will be a miracle that will bring him to ground level.
In his reaction, Senator Melaye said he was not worried about the comments made by Oshiomhole as he cannot determine the outcome of the supplementary election to be conducted by INEC.
“The verbal diarrhoea by the Chairman of APC boasting that 16 of us left the APC and I am the only one standing and in a matter of days, he said I will leave the Senate; I want to say that is human verdict but there is a God verdict,” he stated.
Senator Melaye added, “My seat will not be vacant, I will continue to be a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by the grace of God in the next four years.
“I won that election and we have our pink copies of all our unit results. These have been tabulated and clearly, I won that election and Smart Adeyemi, in his good conscience, knows that I won that election.”
Rather, he took a swipe at the APC chairman, stressing that a PDP senator from Sokoto State who defected from the APC was returned to the red chamber by a court.
“I want to assure you that he (Oshiomhole) didn’t even get his calculation right. Senator Danbaba from Sokoto State was one of us who decamped and just won his seat back at the Court of Appeal.
“Senator Danbaba is right now in the Senate and his four years is guaranteed but because they are desperate to pronounce evil, they forgot that Danbaba is back to the Senate,” Melaye noted.
The embattled lawmaker, however, accused the APC of violence, claiming that 16 people lost their lives.
He insisted that there was no election in Kogi, alleging that the figures announced were fictitious as the PDP has “100 per cent evidence to prove that there was no election” in the state.
Melaye said, “We lost 16 people. The election, actually, it was about the life of Dino Melaye. So I give glory to God who is the Supreme controller of the universe that I am alive.”
