The APC stated this at the end of the inaugural meeting of the National Working Committee, who were sworn into office last week.
Mr. Fayose of the PDP defeated his closest challenger, APC's Kayode Fayemi, by about 100,000 votes to emerge winner of the election held on Saturday.
The APC, in the communiqué, released after the meeting said the process leading up to the election was tainted, thus affecting the whole election.
"If an integral part of the process was badly tainted as we have clearly and fully demonstrated above, then the entire process cannot but be tainted," it said in the communiqué signed by its spokesperson, Lai Mohammed.
Read the full communiqué below.
It is no longer news that the governorship election in Ekiti State has been won and lost, and that our candidate, Gov. Kayode Fayemi, has shown rare sportsmanship by conceding defeat and congratulating the winner, Mr. Ayodele Fayose.
We are very proud of Gov. Fayemi for his conduct and comportment before, during and after the election, and we hail him as a true democrat in the true spirit of the APC's belief that election is never a do or die affair, and that Nigerians must always be free to elect those to govern them. After all, it is said that the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.
Gentlemen, election is a process, and whatever happens on the voting day is only an integral part of that process. What happens before, during and after the voting day complete the process.
If, therefore, we view the just-concluded election in Ekiti as a process, then we can confidently say that while the events of the voting day itself may have led many to believe that the election was free and fair, the same cannot be said of the events before, during and after the election.
We therefore believe that we owe it a duty to the continuous improvement of our electoral system and indeed the sustainability of our democracy to X-ray this election within the context that we have outlined above and draw the necessary lessons
Incidents before election day
We believe that the events leading to the D-Day in Ekiti negate the principles of a free, fair and credible election. From the militarization of the election to the police attack on our supporters, arrest and detention of our leaders across the state and the use of huge funds to induce voters, the federal authorities skewed everything in favour of the PDP.
Militarization of the process:
With thousands of armed troops, police, state security and civil defence personnel deployed to Ekiti, the state was simply under a total lock down. While we believe that the police and the civil defence indeed have a role to play in providing the necessary security for the election, we do not see why soldiers who were armed to the teeth need to be deployed to a non-belligerent situation like an election, especially at a time that their services are more needed elsewhere to turn around a slow motion war that is daily claiming the lives of our compatriots. The questions to ask are: who ordered the deployments of the troops and for what purpose. Who gave the orders to stop Gov. Rotimi Amaechi from reaching Ado-Ekiti, as the Army captain who stopped and threatened to shoot him said he was acting under "orders from above".
It is worth mentioning that the physical prevention of Gov. Amaechi from joining his colleagues at the final campaign rally of Gov. Fayemi in Ekiti is a direct function of the unnecessary deployment of troops to Ekiti for the election. This event will go down as the biggest affront to democracy in our country in recent times.
Also worth mentioning is the flagrant abuse of national institutions that led to the country's aviation authorities shutting down airports in Akure and elsewhere on the same day that our party had its last campaign rally in Ado-Ekiti. This act of impunity was targeted solely at the opposition, and it runs against global standards. Let's we forget on the same day the helicopter ferrying Governor Adams Oshiomhole fro Benin Airport to Akure en route Ekiti for that finally rally was prevented from taking off. Airports are never shut without the issuance of a NOTAM - Notice to Airmen. Again, who gave the orders for the closure of the airports?
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