The running mate of the late Audu Abubakar, James Faleke maintains that he’s the governor-elect of Kogi state, while stating that his competitor, Yahaya Bello, worked against the All Progressives Congress, in the governorship election.
Hence, Faleke expressed his opposition to the December 5 supplementary election and the decision of Kogi APC to pick Bello as the replacement for Audu.
Faleke also denied that he was contacted by the party over the recent developments, adding that he had written a protest-letter to the National Chairman of the party, John Odigie-Oyegun, regarding the nomination of Bello.
He said: “All these talks about the APC reaching out to me are unfounded. Nothing like that has happened. They have not approached me. It is false and not true.
“In any case, what purpose will that serve? I have made my position very clear in the letters I wrote to INEC and the national chairman of the party.
“I have written a second one, and I am saying that the nomination of Bello is wrong; we won’t accept it. We stand by the position as stated in those letters.
“And for the benefit of doubt, I am on this project with (Mohammed Audu)) the son of my late boss. We are working together in opposing this nomination of Bello.”
In Faleke’s letter to the National Chairman of the APC, dated November 27, he detailed how Yahaya Bello worked for the Peoples Democratic Party, after losing out to Audu Abubakar in the primary elections.
The letter reads in part: “I wish to put it on record that I was neither consulted nor informed by anybody before my name was submitted as running mate to a man who has, since the conduct of the primary, abandoned the party, took the party to court, worked for the PDP, thereby causing our party to lose his polling unit – 88 votes to his ally party, the PDP’s 116, repeating the same feat at the ward level with APC scoring 1,146 to PDP’s 2,058.
“While it is true that the said Alhaji Yahaya Bello participated in our party’s primary, it is trite that party primaries are conducted to produce a candidate, and once a candidate is produced, the congress, being an ad hoc tool of the party for that purpose, should automatically extinguish.
“It is clear from this injustice, that our party is on the path of rewarding disloyalty and discouraging loyalty through this act of impunity for which we all fought the PDP.”
