Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) urged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to end “ spurious allegations” against the INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu over the conduct of the elections.
This was disclosed in a statement by the Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi on Friday in Abuja.
PDP claims the plan by INEC to reconfigure the BVAS devices will enable them to erase and destroy evidence of its manipulation of the Presidential election and, deny Nigerians and political parties access to relevant information required to prosecute cases at the Presidential Election Tribunal.
Misplaced calls: INEC in its statement revealed that the calls for resignation by the PDP were misplaced, adding:
- “Interestingly, the PDP did not provide any convincing evidence to back up all the spurious allegations it listed as Yakubu’s infractions.
- “To be sure, the PDP failed to provide any evidence to substantiate the allegations of Yakubu’s “brazen violation of the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022, INEC’s Regulations and Guidelines, and criminal manipulation and alteration of election results”.
- “The PDP also did not give the evidence to prove its claims that Prof. Yakubu “sabotaged the uploading and transmission of results from polling units.”
False evidence: The electoral body added that the evidence PDP claims “abound in the six geo-political zones of the country where winning figures scored by the PDP were switched in favour of the APC” were also not laid bare, saying:
- “To be sure, INEC does not rig elections. Rather, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) has, since its introduction, among other innovations, ensuring the integrity of the electoral process by ensuring that only properly registered voters are allowed to vote on election day.”
- “It is common knowledge that the PDP has rejected the outcome of the presidential election and has vowed to challenge it in court.
- “The path of honour for the party, therefore, is to pursue its case in court, armed with all the evidence at its disposal and wait for the court’s decision.
- ”But going about canvassing the same issues the party intends to plead in court on the pages of newspapers and calling for the resignation of the INEC Chairman is like putting the cart before the horse.
- “More importantly, the PDP is hereby reminded that making libellous allegations against the person of the INEC Chairman is actionable. The party should henceforth desist from the practice.
What you should know
PDP in a statement on Friday demanded the Resignation of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman and urged the Police, and DSS to Investigate INEC Boss for alleged Electoral Offences.
They also called for International Sanctions for Undermining Democracy., they said:
“INEC under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu was compromised to rig the election by brazenly violating the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 as well as INEC’s Regulations, Guidelines and Manual issued for the election.
- “It is also obvious that the Commission under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu deliberately sabotaged the uploading and transmission of results directly from the Polling Units to give room for the criminal mutilation, alteration and switching of election results across the nation in favour of the APC as now abundantly exposed in the pictorial and video evidence of compromised results sheets in many parts of the Country.”
