In a letter to the national chairman of APC, John Odigie-Oyegun dated November 27, 2015 which was also copied to INEC and the APC national secretary, Faleke said:
“RE: My purported nomination as Deputy Governor
Information at my disposal from the National Secretariat of our party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, and my telephone conversation with your good self, confirmed to me that the party had issued INEC form and submitted my name as running mate to Alhaji Yahaya Bello in the forthcoming unusual and strange governorship elections scheduled for December 5, 2015, covering 91 polling units in Kogi State, to elect a “supplementary governor.”
Mr. Chairman, you may recall that an election was conducted on November 21, 2015 in which I was running mate to the late Prince Audu Abubakar. I, therefore, remain fully committed to that joint ticket which received the blessings of the party leadership including your good self evident from your attendance at the campaign rallies to ensure total victory for our great party through which the people of Kogi State massively and overwhelmingly voted for us.
Following the demise of my principal after the announcement of results from the polling units, wards, local government areas and the state, our party had the highest number of votes of 240,867 against PDP’s 199,514 thus creating a difference of 41,353 votes between the two leading parties. On the strength of this, I hereby state clearly that I remain the Governor-elect of Kogi State on the platform of our great party.
Please take this letter as confirmation to disassociate myself from this unusual and strange supplementary nomination of my humble self as running mate to Alhaji Yahaya Bello. This also serves as a notice of rejection of the purported illegal nomination of myself as running mate to Alhaji Yahaya Bello.
I wish to put it on record that I was neither consulted nor informed by anybody before my name was submitted as running mate to a man who has since the conduct of the primaries, abandoned the party, took the party to court, worked for PDP thereby causing our party to lose his polling units with 88 votes to his ally party, the PDP’s 116, repeating same feat at the ward level with APC scoring 1,146 to PDP’s 2,058.
While it is true that the said Alhaji Yahaya Bello participated in our primaries, it is trite that party primaries are conducted to produce a candidate and once a candidate is produced, the congress being an ad hoc tool of the party for that purpose should automatically extinguish.
It is clear from this injustice, that our party is on the path of rewarding disloyalty and discouraging loyalty through this act of impunity for which we all fought the PDP.
It may also interest you Mr. Chairman, that the said Alhaji Yahaya Bello since the conduct of the primaries had been aloof from the party activities as it is on record that he did not attend a single meeting or campaign rally of the party.
Mr Chairman, I am sure that it is neither in your interest nor that of the party in particular and the public in general to lord an illegality on the people of Kogi State.
Please take note that I am not interested in surrendering the mandate of the people of Kogi State bestowed on the Audu/Faleke joint ticket at the Nov 21 polls as I remain the Governor-elect.
Sir, I believe in the leadership of our great party to resolve this in the shortest possible time, failure upon which I shall be forced to seek redress in the Court of law.”
In the same vein, APC youths from Kogi East continued their protest against Bello, yesterday.
The youths threatened to disrupt the December 5 supplementary poll unless Mohammed Audu is fielded by the All Progressives Congress as replacement for his father.