Members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday protested the outcome of the February 23 presidential election.
Led by PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus, the PDP members marched from their presidential campaign office in Maitama to the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the same district in Abuja.
The members in their hundreds, who carried placards with various inscriptions, demanded the release of the original election results from the last presidential election.
Secondus maintained that the exercise was characterised with irregularities including militarisation of the process, manipulation of figures and disruption of the election in PDP strongholds.
He condemned what he called harassment of PDP members by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to frustrate them from challenging the election outcome at the tribunal.
Presenting a petition to INEC National Commissioner, Legal Services, May Agbamuche-Mbu, Secondus kicked against ‘deliberate non-deployment of the Electronic Collation System (E-Collation) for the elections results’ from polling units to the National Collation Centre.
Titled ‘Cases of infractions and deliberate violations of the Electoral Law and guidelines’, the letter was addressed to the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu.
“We also want to bring to your knowledge that most of the collation centers in the country were cordoned off by officers and men of the armed forces who chased away accredited agents and or candidates of our party, the PDP, from such centers while the results of the elections from the units were being manipulated, mutilated and altered to suite the dictates and criminal desires of the APC led government. These results that were tampered with were accepted by you and your commission and announced as the results of the elections.
“In places like Lagos, Rivers, Nassarawa, Abia, Benue, Plateau, Ondo, Osun States el al, results of duly conducted elections were illegally canceled especially in the PDP dominated areas to reduce the margin of victory in those states in Favour of APC candidates. Is it not surprising to you that Lagos state with over six million voters can only return less than one million votes? This was the case in virtually all PDP dominated states where voter’s suppression was deployed as a major strategy by you and the APC government in active collaboration of some of your unscrupulous RECs and staffers.
“We are sure that till date the commission does not know the number of polling units where elections were cancelled and the total number of registered voters at such polling units. Yet you hurriedly announced the results of the elections especially the Presidential election only to come up with a Press Statement that supplementary elections will be conducted on March 9, 2019 along with the Gubernatorial and House of Assembly Elections. This to say the least is a major dent on the credibility and image of the commission.
“We have taken time to chronicle the above fundamental deliberate violations and infractions of the Electoral Law, Regulations and Guidelines and all known canons of electoral best practices by your Commission in obvious complicity and collaboration with APC and security agencies to rig the elections and rob our party of victory.
“We want to remind you that as we inch towards Saturday, March 9, 2019 elections, you must do everything to right these grave anomalies to save yourself and the commission from this woeful embarrassment as you may go down in history as the worst Chairman of INEC in our history,” the document signed by Secondus and PDP National Secretary, Ibrahim Umaru Tsauri, reads in part.
Some of the placards read: ‘Give us our vote in Kogi’, ‘INEC stop using bad votes to rig election’, ‘ECOWAS save our democracy’, ‘INEC stop this manipulation please’, ‘INEC please do the the right thing’, ‘International observers say the truth’ among others.
As of the time of the protest, members of the diplomatic community including the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Stuart Symington, British Ambassador to Nigeria, Catriona Laing among others were driving out of the Commission’s headquarters where they paid a courtesy call on the electoral body.
Responding, Agbamuche-Mbu assured that the forthcoming state elections would be free, fair and credible.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
