Senators, Reps-elect to receive certificates of return March 14, says Yakubu

• Ondo supplementary election unnecessary, waste of money, PDP insists
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC will on Thursday, March 14 issue certificates of return to Senators and House of Representatives who emerged winners in the Presidential and National Assembly polls.It said the certificates would be presented at the International Conference Centre (ICC) Abuja where Senators-elect would receive theirs at 10am, while House of Representatives-elect would collect theirs by 2pm.

INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this in Abuja during a meeting with Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) yesterday.He explained that National Commissioners and the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) would present certificates of return to governors and deputy governors-elect, members of state Houses of Assembly-elect, chairmen and councilors for the FCT in each state of the federation on a date to be announced next week.

Following the supplementary election in Ondo South Senatorial district of Ondo State, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has declared that the exercise was not necessary, describing it a waste of tax payers’ money. Chairman of the party, Clement Faboyede, who led other party leaders to a media briefing in Akure yesterday, urged INEC to declare the party’s candidate as winner of the election.

INEC had declared the election inconclusive in 56 units in four local governments namely: Ese-Odo, Ilaje, Irele and Odigbo over 28,047 votes difference between PDP and APC candidates. Meanwhile, due to crises that erupted after the National Assembly polls in Ondo, the state chapter of Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) has urged the Federal Government to designate it as a flash point state.

State Chairman of the party, Rotimi Boboye, raised the alarm at a media briefing in Akure yesterday, advising the acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) Adamu Mohammed to declare Ondo as a flash point for electoral violence. Boboye expressed dismay over the violence, which erupted in the state, saying: “we have it on reliable authority that a particular major political party in the state.

“The party has been holding nocturnal meetings with different groups of unscrupulous elements who have been contracted to unleash terror on the electorate in the state.”