The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has called for the prosecution of the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, following revelations by the European Union that the 2019 general election was marred by severe operational challenges and violence.
The main opposition party argued that it had been vindicated, with the fresh revelation by the damning EU report.
Specifically, the party maintained that the February 23 2019 Presidential election was rigged to favour President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
A statement on Sunday by Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP National Publicity Secretary, commended the EU for the courage in ‘exposing the evils committed by the APC and INEC in the 2019 general elections’.
“The party notes that the revelations of manipulations as detailed in the EU report further validates queries by majority of Nigerians that President Buhari was not validly returned for a second term in office.
“The world can now see that the PDP has not been crying wolf in insisting that the election was outrightly (sic) rigged with the cancellation of millions of PDP votes, alteration of results and allocation of fictitious votes to the APC.
“Nigerians are still in shock over the revelations by EU of how about 2.8 million votes were deliberately “cancelled without sufficient accountability” and how several returning officers gave no reason for the cancellations.
“More shocking is the iniquity committed at the national collation center, headed by the INEC Chairman, where the EU report exposed inconsistent numbers, distortions and “a large discrepancy of “1.66 million more registered voters, as announced by INEC on 14 January, compared to those announced by state returning officers during the collation of presidential results.
“Nigerians witnessed, on national TV, how professors and returning officers were unable to reconcile result figures due to heavy manipulations upon which INEC declared the APC winner,” the statement reads.
According to the party, the report has further exposed the ‘iniquity committed by the Prof. Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC’ by listing how ballot boxes were compromised, how essential materials were missing, how ‘voter register was not always ticked as required’ and how ‘manual authentication procedures were not correctly followed’.
The statement added that the report has further reinforced the confidence of millions of Nigerians in its collective expectation of justice in the quest to retrieve its stolen Presidential mandate at the tribunal.
It added: “The report also bared how figures on result forms did not reconcile, how result forms were not publicly posted, how “result forms and smart card readers were not packed in tamper-evident envelops as required”, in addition to how the APC administration used security forces to intimidate voters, aid violence against our members and muscled votes for the APC”.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
