Melaye recall: PDP commends Kogi West constituents

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Sunday commended constituents in  Kogi West Senatorial  District for resisting the move to recall Sen. Dino Melaye from the Senate.

Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP,  in a statement  in Lokoja on Sunday,  said that the people of Kogi West where he also comes from have shown that no individual power can be greater than  the collective will of the people.

He commended them for standing by Melaye and for showing to the  world that the Okun speaking Yoruba of Kogi  are one and united in purpose.

“I thank Kogi Westerners who spit on the face of arrogance of power and told those in power that there is more to life than bandying cash.

“I commend our leaders, who, setting aside personal rancour, worked in our collective desire to reject neo-colonialism,” he said.

The PDP spokesman also thanked indigenes of Kogi West abroad for their “encouragement to resist an attempt to disgrace our race.”

It would be recall that the summary of the petitioners’  signatures verification conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Saturday in 552 polling units in Kogi West Senatorial District shows that the recall attempt failed woefully.

Also, 189, 870 out of the total 351,146 registered voters in the district had on June 24, 2017 submitted a petition to the INEC headquarters for the recall of Melaye.

The petitioners were led by one Cornelius Olowo from Ijumu Local Government area of the state where Melaye ironically also hailed from.

The development forced  INEC to fix  Saturday  to verify the signatures of the petitioners.

At the end of the exercise , only 20,868 of the petitioners presented themselves for verification while 18,742 were actually verified by  INEC.

The total number of  petitioners verified represented  just 5.34 per cent of  the 51 per cent required for the petition to sail through.