The Senate on Wednesday, December 4, administered oath of allegiance to Smart Adeyemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the Senator representing Kogi -West Senatorial District.
This followed his declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the winner of Kogi West senatorial district in the November 30 supplementary election.
Adeyemi had approached the 2019 election petition tribunal seeking the nullification of Sen.Dino Melaye of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) election on grounds of irregularities in the Feb. 23 senatorial election.
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The tribunal had nullified the election and ordered for a re-run of the election. Dino, not satisfied with the decision of the tribunal, appealed the judgment of the tribunal at the Court of Appeal which later upheld the judgment of the tribunal.
Following the conduct of elections for the Kogi West -Senatorial district by INEC on November 16 and supplementary election on November 30, Adeyemi was declared winner of the election.
Melaye had since rejected the outcome of the election. The emergence of Sen. Adeyemi back to the senate had increased the number of APC senators to 63, PDP 45 while YPP has one senator.
Earlier, The Herald reported that Melaye described the election as a civil war. He alleged that 16 people were killed in the poll violence. The senator, when citing an instance of irregularity in Okene local government, said the total number of votes INEC allocated to the APC exceeded the number of Voters Registration Cards (PVC) collected.
Melaye tweeted: “What we had in Kogi is no election, what we had was a civil war that has claimed 16 lives so far. I will report Bello, Smart Adeyemi, Taofik, Speaker Kolawole and Sunday Faleke to the international community and then proceed to Hague. This i promise,”