Labour rejects INEC’s declaration of Abaribe winner of Abia South

Labour Party candidate Chinedu Onyeizu in the Abia South senatorial district has rejected the result declaring Enyinnaya Abaribe (PDP) as the winner of the February 25 election.

Mr Onyeizu told journalists in Aba, on Wednesday that INEC made a mistake by awarding Mr Abaribe more votes than he got, as could be seen in INEC’s records.

He expressed shock that Georgina Ugwuanyi, the returning officer, changed her mind concerning her earlier announcement that the election was inconclusive.

Mr Onyeizu said despite the irregularities INEC talked about in some polling units, he led Mr Abaribe with 10,000 votes before the Returning Officer declared the election inconclusive.

He said it was shocking and remained an electoral mystery how INEC reduced his scores to 43,903 votes and inflated Mr Abaribe’s to 49,693 votes from about 38,000.

He condemned Mr Abaribe’s declaration of himself as the winner before INEC said so, and said he rejected the results and would contest it.

The Labour candidate noted that his opponents had shown that they were afraid of the rescheduled election seeing that he, Mr Onyeizu was on ground and that the people had chosen Labour in all their votes.

“There were issues with a lot of the polling units in Aba North, Aba South and Obingwa local government areas based on the number of registered voters and the number of actual votes cast,” Mr Onyeizu. “So it was obvious that the election was inconclusive, and the Returning Officer made a statement two days ago concerning that.”

He added, “She stated that the election results were inconclusive as a result of the irregularities experienced. We were very optimistic that INEC would make public the new date for the rescheduled elections, but instead, it turned around to declare results.”

Mr Onyeizu called on INEC to admit the mistake and announce him as the genuine winner.

The returning officer had announced before party agents that the election was inconclusive and would be rescheduled.

However, on Tuesday evening, she returned to declare the winner in an election earlier declared inconclusive, stating that she got calls from Abuja INEC to declare the results without a rescheduled election. 

(NAN)