The Ondo State Independent Electoral Commission (ODIEC) has announced the results of 16 of the 18 local government of the council election held in the state last Saturday.
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) cleared the chairmanship and counsellorship seat in all the 16 local government announced soon far.
While announcing the results of the election, the Chairman of ODIEC, Dr. Joseph Aremo, said commission cancelled the results of Owo and Ondo West local government areas and rescheduled, citing wrong logo of one of the parties on the ballot papers.
Aremo said the results for Owo and Ondo West, which was cancelled and rescheduled for Sunday, due to wrong logo of one of the parties on the ballot papers would be announced later.
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The candidates of the New Nigerian People’s Party, (NNPP), have kicked against the logo on the ballot paper and threatened to head to Court to contest the total omission of the party’s logo in the ballot paper used for the polls.
The NNPP chairmanship candidate in Ondo West local government, Adebayo Olumide Oluwemimo said that the party’s logo could not be found on the ballot paper but claimed that old logo was used by the ODIEC.
Adebayo said, “Our party’s candidates, members and their supporters are in their various polling units to vote this morning because we are sure of winning but only to get there and realised that our logo is omitted and we can’t vote on wrong logo.”
He threatened to take legal action if the election is not cancelled and the error by ODIEC corrected on their logo.
Recall that 12 political parties participated in the council election for positions of chairman, deputy chairman and councillors across the 18 council areas of the state.
However, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) withdrew from the election less than 72 hours to the election citing doubts about the ability and integrity of the state electoral umpire to conduct a free, fair, and credible election.
Meanwhile, speaking on the withdrawal of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party withdrawal from the weekend council election, the state governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, described the decision of the PDP to pull out, “as an act of cowardice”
Aiyedatiwa said that “They participated in the whole process, the state electoral body, released the timetable for the election, I don’t know the reason for that.
“Maybe the fear of losing, every election has its own logistics and other political parties are participating whatever reason that made them withdraw, I am not privy to that.
But the PDP in the state had stated in a statement through its Director of Media and Publicity, Leye Igbabo, that “the decision is a product of several layers of consultations of party leaders, stakeholders and the National Secretariat of our great party
“We have, therefore, resolved to withdraw our participation in this exercise to uphold the integrity of our party and our unwavering belief in credible electoral practices.”
NIGERIAN TRIBUNE