Three opposition political parties — the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and African Democratic Congress (ADC) — have demanded for an halt to the ongoing declaration of results from the Saturday’s presidential election.
The political parties are asking for an outright cancellation of the exercise and a fresh election, alleging that the February 25, 2023 presidential election has been “irretrievably compromised”.
PDP national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu; LP National Chairman, Julius Abure; as well as their ADC counterpart, Ralph Nwosu, made their demands known at a joint press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.
They alleged that the elections were manipulated by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at polling units by their failure to upload results electronically on the commission’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV).
LP’s Abure, who spoke on behalf of the others, said, “This election is not free and far from being fair”, adding that there are “ongoing cancellation of results from areas of strength of the opposition parties”.
They declared a vote of no confidence on INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and asked him to immediately step aside for an unbiased person to take over and conduct a fresh election.
According to them, the deliberate refusal of the INEC chairman to respect the upload of results electronically as stipulated by Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022 is unacceptable.
The three parties said the result so far by INEC showed “monumental disparities” between what the party agents signed and what INEC officials announced in Abuja.
They said the manual transmission of results compromised the integrity of the election process.