Double Registration: Court Asked To Disqualify Bello As Kogi Governorship Candidate

A governorship aspirant in Kogi State, Natasha Akpoti, has filed
a suit before the Federal High Court in Abuja praying for the
disqualification of Governor Yahaya Bello as a candidate in the
forthcoming November 16 governorship election in the state.

Akpoti, in the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/122/2019 filed on Monday,
anchored her prayer on Bellow’s alleged double registration as a
voter.

Apart from disqualification, the plaintiff also asked the court
to bar Bello, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives
Congress in the forthcoming poll, from holding public office for 10
years.

She also prayed for another order compelling the Independent
National Electoral Commission to “thoroughly investigate the act of
double registration” and “to immediately prosecute him upon the
expiration of his first tenure in office as governor of Kogi State
in January 2020”.

The plaintiff’s lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), who filed the
suit on her behalf contended that Bello’s act of double
registration as a voter grossly violated section 24(e) of the
Electoral Act.

Ozekhome argued as part of the grounds of the suit that “By his
willful act of making double registration”, Bello as APC’s
candidate, “is not a fit and proper person to be allowed by the 2nd
defendant, INEC, to vote or be voted for in the forthcoming Kogi
State governorship election, having committed acts of electoral
fraud”.

The senior lawyer also maintained that Bello underwent double
voter registration as a voter in gross violation of the electoral
law, and that INEC had sacked two of its employees who allegedly
“aided and abetted Yahaya Bello in his act of double registration
as a voter”.

In the affidavit she deposed to in support of the suit, Akpoti,
said she contested the March 23, 2019, Kogi Central senatorial
election but lost.

She noted that she had emerged as the Social Democratic Party’s
candidate in the forthcoming governorship election in the state but
was unjustifiably disqualified by INEC.

She described herself as “an indigene of Kogi State, a legal
practitioner, an astute politician, a political reformer, a
pro-masses advocate, a philanthropist and one deeply involved in
and concerned with the parlous state of affairs of Kogi State
people and Nigerians alike.”

She alleged that Bello first registered as a voter in Abuja in
2011 and procured the second voter registration in Lokoja, the Kogi
State capital in May 2017.

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