By Ogochukwu Isioma
Some agents of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Saturday’s presidential election, on Monday, staged a walk out of the national collation centre in Abuja ahead of the announcement of the winner of the presidential election.
The agents include Senator Dino Melaye who represented Kogi West senatorial district and former Imo governor, Emeka Ihedioha.
They had alleged manipulation of some figures in the election results, calling on the National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahood Yakubu to review them.
Specifically, the agents alleged that there was a discrepancy in the results announced for Ekiti State due to over-voting.
They also insisted the figures from the different States should be uploaded on the INEC server/result viewing portal of the electoral commission.
Before storming out of the centre, the party agents asked the commission to review the collated results before proceeding with the exercise.
But the INEC boss said there would be no review until the process was completed, a development that made the PDP agents to stage a walk out of the centre.
“I agree with your suggestion that the commission has the power to review election results, but that is contingent on one thing: the collation has to be concluded first. After this, we can then look into such request,” Yakubu said.
However, the agents insisted that INEC must discontinue the announcement of the results till all results were transmitted to the INEC result viewing portal from each state to encourage transparency.
Responding, the INEC boss said that the claim was untrue, having verified from the official template of results at the commission’s disposal.
Yakubu also said that the collation would go on because the commission was convinced that the request to discontinue the process was not acceptable.
“I can confirm that there was no over-voting in Ekiti State. What we have is correct and accurate and whatever result you have are inconsistent with the official results,” Yakubu said.
“Collation of results have been done at different layers and agents of political parties have agreed to their correctness.”
Following the INEC chairman’s insistence, the PDP agents walked out of the national collation centre in protest.
