“This Is Helicopter Election” – Dino Melaye Says As He Rejects Kogi Senatorial Result

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Kogi West Senatorial candidate in rerun election, Dino Melaye has described Saturday’s election as ‘helicopter election’, saying the results of Saturday’s election so far announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were ‘fictitious’.

Smart Adeyemi of the All Progressive Congress (APC) was leading in five out of the seven local governments announced by the INEC.

Reacting to Adeyemi’s lead in the Saturday election, Melaye rejected the result, alleging that the poll “was marred by compromise, extreme violence, and rigging”. He said:

“The innovation is that what we had is what I have christened ‘Helicopter election’. For the first time, rigging has been advanced to the level that now the use of a helicopter in perpetuating this electoral atrocity manifested yesterday,” he said.

“Helicopter hovering around Polling units in Lokoja, dropping bullets on innocent, harmless citizens and electorate; and as I speak, yesterday, teargas being fired from this helicopter.

“Despite the fact that this helicopter was used in harassing, intimidating and firing innocent electorates, the votes of those places were carted away and taken to the government house, stuffed and brought back to the collation centre and they have been accepted and admitted and collation is ongoing.

“They brought mayhem on my own community and even killed my nephew, we are waiting to see what INEC will do, but I reject in totality, this fictitious result and I want to say that all these are not about the election, it is about Dino Melaye.”

Meanwhile, the PDP gubernatorial candidate in Kogi, Musa Wada has also rejected the result of Saturday’s election.

Musa Wada told journalists that the election results being announced by INEC was a representation of what happened in the field.

Wada, who vowed to challenge the outcome of the poll in court said results from all the local governments have been rewritten.