Presidential candidate of the Labor Party, Peter Obi has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to publish the final results of the March 18 governorship elections in Abia and Enugu states
Obi who made this known in a statement frowned at the delay in releasing the result.
INEC had on Monday suspended the collation of results in Abia and Enugu States and declared that it would review the result from some local government areas.
The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour have been in war of words accusing each other of some illegal roles in falsification of results from the remaining local government areas, leading to the suspension of collation by INEC.
This is even as INEC has denied reports that influenced the docoring of election results in Obingwa and other local government areas through a call by the commission’s chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu to the Returning Officer, Professor Nnenna Otti, in favour of a certain political
Reacting, Obi said although he is aware that INEC is reviewing the collation of the results in Abia and Enugu, the further delay will question the Commission’s intent and credibility of the election.
“The Records of the Elections from Polling Units should not be difficult to calculate if the Electoral Officials are committed to the integrity of the Exercise in line with the stipulated Guidelines.”
Denying the allegation INEC insisted that the chairman never put any call across to the Abia state governorship election Returning to give her directives on guidelines to follow in ensuring that Abia governorship election results were collated based on some certain criteria., as claimed in the allegation
A statement by INEC Chief Press Secretary, Rotimi Oyekanmi, explained rather that it was the Returning Officer that called the Chairman when she wanted the official communication on the Commission’s decision to suspend the collation of results in the State.
“The Chairman then directed that pending the delivery of the hard copies, the soft copies of the Commission’s letter be forwarded immediately to the Resident Electoral Commissioner of Enugu State and the Administrative Secretary of Abia State.
“The Returning Officer for Abia State then directed that the content of the letter should be read aloud by the Administrative Secretary in the presence of agents of political parties, observers, the media and security personnel at the Collation Centre.
“This is what is now being mischievously interpreted as a directive to the Returning Officer on some phantom criteria at variance with the approved guidelines. There is nothing like that.
“In fact, the content of the letter is basically the same as the Commission’s press release dated Monday 20th March 2023 which has since been uploaded to the Commission’s social media platforms and is already in the public domain.