The Labour Party has kicked against the result of Saturday’s governorship election that produced the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Mbah, as the winner of the poll.
The Independent National Electoral Commission had Wednesday night declared Mbah winner of the poll after the results of the controversial Nkanu East Local Government Area were accepted and recalculated over allegations of over-voting among others.
LP had through its agent, Dr Eugene Edeoga, on Sunday night, raised objections on the results of Nkanu East, stating that the elections were not conducted inline with INEC Guidelines.
He said that there was over-voting, manipulation of election results and non-use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machine in the LGA.
He, however, demanded the results should be cancelled. On Monday, following the protests and petition, INEC suspended the collation and declaration of poll results. On Wednesday, INEC said it had revised the results and found out that there was manipulation and over-voting in Nkanu East LGA.
However, after allocating votes to parties according to what it said were genuine votes from the local government, the returning officer declared Peter Mbah of PDP the winner of the poll.
However, reacting to the results of the election as declared by INEC, the LP said it would not accept the result, adding the March 18, 2023 election was marred by widespread and wholesale rigging, intimidation of voters, doctoring, mutilation and manipulation of the results.
LP in a statement issued on Thursday by the State Publicity Secretary, Onuora Odo, stated,
“It’s on record that the process of accreditation and use of BVAS was not followed in some of the pooling booths, especially Nkanu East.”
“It’s also on record that in the course of the collation of results, the results of Nkanu East showed monumental disparities between the number of registered voters and the total number of votes, but the obviously compromised INEC decided to disregard the provisions of the Electoral Act and went ahead to declare the conspicuously padded results despite complaints from the opposition parties.
“This was the reason why they deliberately delayed the announcement of the result to pave way for further manipulations.
“The position of the party, therefore, is that the result as declared by INEC on the 22nd of March, 2023, four days after the elections were concluded, was heavily doctored and does not reflect the wishes of Ndi Enugu State.”
He added,
“In view of the foregoing developments, we are, by this media release, registering our dissatisfaction over the electoral irregularities and malfeasances activated and actuated by heavy financial inducements.
“Let it be known that our great party is poised to deepen the root of democracy in Nigeria and can not fold our arms and allow this level of the electoral heist to go unchallenged.
“In due course, the position of the party will be made known as we have started assembling our facts together to do the needful. Surely, this is a rape of democracy.”