A group of opposition parties in Nigeria have called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to hold fresh elections in Nigeria, arguing that what they have seen so far is vote allocation and not collation.
The opposition party members stated this during a press briefing led by Iyorchia Ayu and Dino Melaye of the PDP and Julius Abure of the Labour Party.
According to them, the cost of conducting fresh elections would be cheaper than the cost of poor governance.
Election Act Violation: Iyorchia Ayu, PDP’s National Chairman, stated that INEC violated its act following its failure to electronically transmit election results at the polling units. He said:
- “The electoral procedure derived from the electoral act which was presented by INEC, which says results have to be uploaded from the polling unit, which INEC has violated the act,
- “We need to challenge the results right from the time it is presented to the public, INEC has the responsibility of reviewing and correcting them.”
They added that it is such a wide-scale violation, malpractice is on a grade scale, and we need to bring the attention of the Nigerian and international community.
Allocated votes: Dino Melaye argued that the widespread nature of rigging is enough to affect the outcome of the election result. He also strongly stressed that “What we have seen so far are vote allocation and not collation, is a reason for outright cancellation”
Julius Abure of the Labour Party noted that it is clear to all Nigerians that the election is already compromised, and have it do it right, adding what we are doing is in line with what our members want.
- “There is no cost of a re-election would be high, but part of the sacrifices that we need to make, because the costs of poor governance and bad governance are far more expensive than the cost of conducting free and fair elections.
Need for action: The parties added that the elections have not been credible and acceptable and there is a need to take action to remedy it. They said:
- “To have this, it is dangerous, and we have to take necessary steps, we the representatives have a responsibility. The best thing to be done is to repeat the process because they have failed, we had expected the process would be done in line with the electoral act.
- “We are hopeful, at this stage, some of the wrongs can be corrected, and bring sanity to the situation level of malpractice is widespread.”
In case you missed it: The Labour Party revealed on Tuesday that it has evidence through polling unit data that shows that results being announced by INEC for Labout have been doctored. Media aide to Peter Obi, Valentine Ozigbo, disclosed this on Tuesday morning.
