Several opposition parties, among them the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and Action Alliance (AA), late Monday afternoon stormed out of the National Collation Centre for the February 25, 2023 presidential election.
This followed the refusal of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, to suspend the process pending the transmission of the results to the INEC server as provided by the Electoral Act.
They were led by Senator Dino Melaye, a former chairman of the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) an agent of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The agents of ten opposition parties had earlier insisted that the results being announced at the National Collation Centre in Abuja are different from what were recorded at the states during the Saturday Presidential election.
They had caused a stir at the National Collation Centre when they rejected the presidential election result declared for Ekiti State, alleging over-voting.
The drama started before the beginning of collation when Melaye, who is also the agent of PDP, raised an observation that the figures of results announced by INEC for Ekiti State does not correlate.
INEC had declared the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, winner for Ekiti State with 201,494 defeating his closest rival Alhaji Abubakar Atiku of PDP, who scored 89, 554.
Peter Obi of LP polled 11,397 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria Peoples Party polled 264 votes; 1703 votes were cancelled due to bye-pass of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation Systems and over-voting.
But making his observation, Melaye, said after calculation done by the PDP, there was a discrepancy of an increase of 887 in the total number of figures from Ekiti State.
The agents of AA, Kenneth Udeze and Labour Party, Umar Farouk agreed with the observation made by Melaye.
But INEC, chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu insisted that the commission stood by the result declared by the collation officer of Ekiti State, Prof. Akeem Olawale Lasisi, who is the Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila Orangun, Osun State.
“I still insist that the figure presented by the state collation officer for the presidential election for Ekiti state of the total number of accredited voters is 315,058. This is what is on the spreadsheet that we screened yesterday. And this is also what is on the actual result manual recorded by the scope and signed by the PDP agent and agents of other political parties back in Ekiti state.
“But having said that, I’ve taken note of your observations, let us make progress on that one. But what we have here is exactly what I’ve said. And any other figure that is at variance with this one cannot supersede the official result presented. Let’s make progress.”
But Melaye continued and almost stopped the collation of results in Kwara State.
Text, except headline, courtesy of News Express
