The Third Force, an amalgam of allied political parties and interest groups, under the platform of the Alliance for Defence of Democracy (ADD), has rejected the results of the of the Presidential and National Assembly elections held at the weekend stressing that INEC collation officers have reeled out manufactured and doctored figures against coalition candidates.
This was disclosed in a statement by Olubori Isah Obafemi Director of Publicity, ADD, saying that the ADD acting on the “emerging facts from the Situation Room of our third force Coalition, the leadership of Alliance for Defence of Democracy ADD, is compelled at this critical stage to express strong condemnation for the obvious and glaring collusion between INEC Collation Officers and influential State/political forces in the various collation centres of INEC across the country.”
The Third Force added that from the reports of its field vigilantes, credible news media and some INEC officials, it is abundantly clear that there has been a strategic collusion among some state agents, political gladiators and some unscrupulous officials of INEC. The statement said that the process also led to subverting the will of the electorate by manipulating, doctoring, concocting, manufacturing and allocating imaginary votes and figures contrary to the actual votes cast in the various constituencies where elections were held or not held during the Saturday general elections in Nigeria.
“It is also quite worrisome to note, at this juncture, that the pattern of votes allocation and contortion of figures in the 2019 elections by INEC has been very ridiculous in most cases; as parties without any presence and serious membership in some states have been allocated votes higher than that of established third force parties with visible structures and members, who were most often viciously allotted zero.
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“We find this unwholesome concoction of figures in most of the results announced by INEC as a vicious conspiracy to undermine the prospects and legitimacy of the third force as contrived by state agents, politicians in power and INEC officials to the extent that parties and Presidential Candidates, who have already dropped out of the Presidential race to endorse one of the two dominant Presidential Candidates like ACPN, APDA, PCP, APA, SDP among others even got higher allocated votes than third force parties like AAC, PT, YPP etc which in actual fact mobilised their party’s structures for the Presidential elections till the last day. What an embarrassing irony!” The statement said.
The Third Force added that in the light of the well contrived conspiracy of State agents and INEC against the new breed, third force parties, “we hereby announce our unflinching resolve to resist this dastardly acts of the Nigerian ruling class and hereby direct all fresh breed, third force political parties to immediately boycott the remaining part of the ongoing collation process of INEC by staging a popular walk out from all INEC collation centres since the ongoing electoral process has been heavily compromised and lost every credibility to achieve the raison detre for which the 2019 elections was conducted and we cannot continue to legitimize a blatantly compromised electoral process.”
The Third Force gave evidence of the manipulation, saying that in Nasarawa State for instance, there was a clear discrepancy in the Presidential Result announced by Prof Azubuike as stated below: Registered voters: 1,401,895, Accredited voters: 489,482, Valid votes: 580,778, Rejected votes: 18,621, Total votes cast: 599,399, Party Scores: APC – 289,903, PDP – 283,847, in which case APC+PDP votes alone without adding that of the third force parties is 573,750. So, how come the total votes cast here higher than the total number of accredited voters since accreditation and voting by INEC guidelines happened simultaneously,” the statement said.
The ADD quoted another case of the pathetic confession about the 2019 elections by a Youth Corps member, Perpetual Ndidi, who served as Presiding Officer of a Polling Unit in one of the Northern States. She said that electoral officials in her area of assignment were subjected to heavy terror and duress by local State and political agents.
The ADD quoted a corps member who participated in the election process, as saying that “nothing like card reader, PVC and the rest. They’ll just bring figures and ask you to sign, stamp and give them ballot papers to thumbprint. We didn’t even bring out our card readers. The total number of voters in my polling unit is 1220. These people gave APC 1000 votes, PDP 200 and APGA 20. That’s how APC won. So this is how elections are being conducted in this place.
“At some point, agents were signing, stamping and thumb printing ballot papers at once. We didn’t see even one voters card. When we got back, we were so happy the result would be cancelled because we were told during the training that manual voting isn’t valid. To our greatest surprise, INEC didn’t even request for our card readers.
“They didn’t even ask us how the election went. They didn’t even check the signatures on the ballot papers. They didn’t even ask why we had so many mistakes on our result sheets. They just copied the figures and asked us to go home. INEC is a very big scam. Nigeria needs God’s intervention.” Ndidi stated
The ADD also questioned how some Boko Haram and Criminal Banditry ravaged States like Borno, Zamfara and Yobe were said to have recorded strange higher voters turn out over peaceful states like Lagos etc.
It also raised suspicion and further made mockery of the results currently being reeled out by INEC for the 2019 elections, such that the third force movement in alliance with other patriotic political fronts will have no option than to resist and confront the foisting of false results in the 2019 elections with serious political action and mass protests in the succeeding days
“Lastly, the case of blatant inflation of votes and falsified figures in Ogun East Senatorial elections which led to the senatorial elections being declared inconclusive leaves much to be desired about the charade and sham called elections in Nigeria.
“From the record of our field Vigilantes in Ogun State about five thousand votes were systematically deducted from one of the leading third force Senatorial candidates in the Ogun East elections, while that of some other candidates of state were inflated,” the statement said.
