The leadership of Nigeria’s rising opposition party, Labour Party, and major contender in the 2023 general elections, has rejected the ongoing collation and announcement of the presidential election results ongoing at the National Collation Centre, in Abuja.
National Infinity reports that the Independent National Electoral Commission, earlier on Monday, began collation and announcement of the Presidential Election held on Saturday, February 25 nationwide.
The Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, is one of the leading four presidential candidates and has returned upsets in some sections of the country.
The Party on Monday said it would reject the process because INEC failed to publish all the results from polling units on its iREV server as earlier disclosed.
The party thus questioned the integrity of the collation and announcement exercise at the national collation centre in Abuja.
So also, Nigeria’s main opposition party, PDP, has threatened to reject the result of the presidential election.
The agents of the Peoples’ Democratic Party at the national collation centre in Abuja walked out of the venue in protest at the exercise.
Dino Melaye and Emeka Ihedioha of the PDP had accused INEC of violating the Electoral Act by going ahead with the result collation and announcement despite not uploading the results on the iREV portal.
Agents of some other parties, including those of the SDP, LP and ADP had expressed similar views.
The aggrieved agents all walked out of the venue.
We are not here to rubber stamp the electoral fraud that has been declared by INEC and APC, Mr Melaye told journalists after the election.
“INEC is compromised. APC has influenced INEC,” he alleged.
The PDP agent at the national collation centre in Abuja, Dino Melaye, said this Monday while speaking after the presidential election result for Kwara was announced. Mr Melaye at that point raised concerns about the result of the election in Ekiti which was announced on Sunday.
He argued that the failure of INEC to promptly upload online results from polling units makes the results questionable. He said that the PDP will contest the authenticity of the INEC results.
“As I speak to you, those results were not uploaded for several hours,” Mr Melaye added. “Yesterday I complained to the chairman and two other commissioners and in my presence, they called the REC in Imo, where even the director of ICT was saying they should use offline to upload. So if results were not uploaded, we as parties cannot be challenged that the process is over. The process is not over because it is faulty and results were not uploaded.”
On Sunday, INEC admitted the slow uploading of polling unit results on its result viewing portal (IRev).
The commission said the problem is due to technical hitches.
“It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations,” INEC said in a statement.
It, however, assures Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems and that the IReV remains well-secured.
Another agent of the PDP, Emeka Ihedioha, raised the same concerns, saying results presented at the polling unit are contrary to what is being presented at the collation centre in Abuja.
“As we speak, efforts are still ongoing to undermine that process in a number of states,” Mr Ihedioha said. “It is clear that there were problems with uploading the results, which is fundamental to where we are.”
“It is clear to us that in the course of collation, collation officers were forced by people who think they are more powerful to return results,” Mr Ihedioha added.
At the collation centre, the spokesperson of the PDP, Mr Melaye, also raised concerns about the election results in Ekiti State, which was announced at the national collation centre on Sunday.
“I worked on the results as presented yesterday and I discovered that we have 987,647 registered voters in Ekiti and 301, 558 accredited,” he said, alleging there was overvoting. “And since we have 301, 558 accredited, the results as presented yesterday, APC had 201,494. If you subtract that from 301, 558, what you have left is 100, 064.”
“Out of 100,064, PDP scored 89, 554, if you subtract that from 100,064, what is left is 10,510. And now, it was also recorded that Labour had 11, 397 when the total number left is 10, 510, leaving an over figure of 887.
“Apart from this surplus, we have not even calculated the votes of other political parties. We recall that yesterday you told us that ADC scored 1037.”
Mr Melaye told the INEC chairman that the figures did not add up, alleging that there was over-voting and the total number of votes for political parties outnumbered the number of accredited votes.
However, INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu rejected the demand of the agents and said the process would continue. INEC then continued with the collation exercise.
