Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for Ikwo/Ezza South federal constituency in the last Saturday’s election, Comrade Chinedu Ogah has rejected the outcome of the National Assembly election held in his constituency.
Ogah, at a press conference on Wednesday, Febraury 27, in Abakaliki, alleged that his party won the election, but was criminally denied victory.
He record from card reader with accredited and authenticated votes has it that the APC scored 27,800, while the candidate of the PDP secured 13,000 votes, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
The Returning officer of the INEC had declared Mr Lazarus Ogbeh of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) winner of the election.
Ogbeh polled 31,296 votes to beat his APC opponent, Ogah, who scored 27,695 votes. But, Ogah rejected the outcome alleging that original results from the polling units made available by APC’s polling agents from various polling units indicated that APC had a comfortable lead in the election.
“The election in the constituency was conducted both manually and with card readers and the outcome showed APC leading with 45,000 votes to beat PDP which scored 17,000 votes. “We scored 27,800 votes from card readers’ voting and 17,200 from manual voting which was resorted to when the card readers failed.
“If you compare 45,000 and 17,000, you will see that they did not even see our back in the election”, Ogah said.
He lamented that the resident electoral commissioner, Professor Godswill Obioma’s directive that all votes won must tally with the number recorded in the card readers for the election to be validated was not adhered to.
He said, that rather than comply to the directive, the returning officer connived with PDP, INEC officials and security operatives and went ahead to announce PDP candidate winner of the election.
“The resident commissioner’s directive urging electoral officers involved in the election to ensure that only results from card readers authenticated and verified voters were accepted was completely ignored.
“For the commission to back pedal, upheld result and even went ahead to declare the loser as winner is pure illegality and corruption”, he added.
He, however, called on APC supporters and the constituents to remain calm and law abiding as we will deploy every legitimate means to reclaim the stolen mandate.
