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The candidate of the All Progressives Congress(APC) in the Kogi West senatorial district election, Smart Adeyemi, has defeated Dino Melaye of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP).
Saturday’s election was held in 53 polling units across seven local government areas in the district.
According to the Independent National Electoral Commision(INEC) Returning Officer for election, Prof. Olayinde Lawal, Adeyemi polled 88,373 votes to defeat his closest rival, PDP’s Melaye who polled 62,133 votes
Amb. Rufus Aiyenigba of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) came third in the poll with 659 votes and was trailed by John Olabode and Adeyemi Taiwo of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and Nigeria Elements Progressive Party (NEPP) who garnered 262 and 119 votes respectively.
It would be recalled that Court of Appeal had nullified Melaye’s election and ordered a fresh election which held on November 16 alongside the state’s gubernatorial election.
The November 16 election was declared inconclusive by INEC because there was no outright winner and that the number of cancelled votes was higher than the margin of votes between the APC and PDP candidates.
Meanwhile, Melaye has vowed to approach the courts to seek redress.
Melaye, who spoke shortly after casting his vote on Saturday said he would be approaching the election petitions tribunal if INEC did not review the last election.
He said: “What we have as result is fraud… a major fraud. The November 16 election was a fraud that would not stand.”
He said he had sent petitions to the effect that the earlier election was fraudulent, while “the supplementary election amounts to building something on nothing.”