Some party supporters on Tuesday, marched to INEC Headquarters in Abakaliki to protest what they described as massive manipulation of results to deny their candidates the victory they secured at the polling units.
The over a hundred supporters, who carried placards with inscriptions: "no to rigging" and "the power of the people is greater than the people in power" chanted, ‘’count our votes.’’
Mr. Emmanuel Eze, Labour Party Candidate for Abakaliki and Izzi Federal Constituency, who led the group told journalists, " We have come to INEC headquarters to
register our grievances over the refusal of collation officers to compute and announce our results as secured at the polling booths."
Similarly, Senator Sam Egwu representing Ebonyi North District led other candidates to the State Collation Centre to protest the alleged manual computation of results and conniving collation officers who worked to deny them victory at the polls.
Dr. Vitalis Nwanne, who contested Ikwo and Ezza South Federal Constituency, on the platform of the PDP and Senator Ama Nnachi, who contested Ebonyi South District election as well as Chief Lazarus Ogbeh, who contested Ebonyi Central Senatorial election, all participated in the demonstration and took turns to reject the outcome of the polls in their areas.
One of the protesters, Chief Linus Okorie, claimed that "Election did not hold in about 15 wards with about 15,000 registered voters yet the Returning Officer went ahead and declared Governor David Umahi the winner of the Senatorial election."
Reacting, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the state, Mrs. Onyeka Ugochi, assured the protesters that INEC would re-verify all the results from the polling units to address the alleged irregularities.
Earlier, before the protest march, Mrs. Ugochi had threatened to order the re-computation of any local government result that did not tally with the uploaded polling unit results.
Politics and Opinion.
ความคิดเห็น