Residents of Enugu have stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission’s office as the state awaits the results of the guber election held on March 18.
The controversy arose following the presentation of over 30, 000 votes in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Nkanu East Local Government Area of the state.
Labour Party’s agent Eugene Edeoga had complained that the local government collation officer claimed that BIVAS machines malfunctioned, hence he resorted to manual accreditation and voting.
Ben Ozioko, a public affairs analyst, said, “They used the same BVAS to conduct the state House of Assembly polls in the same area. They used BVAS to conduct the rerun of the senatorial polls. But for the governorship, they refused and allotted over 30, 000 votes to the PDP. It’s unfair.”
Some of the result sheets seen show that the Labour Party scored zero in most polling units, while the PDP won all the accredited voting.
Osita Ogbu, a professor of law at Enugu State University of Science and Technology, however, called on the state resident electoral commissioner to declare the candidate with the highest votes the winner to reduce tension in the state.
According to him, the aggrieved candidates should approach the court if they feel cheated. Quoting him, “Officials in an electoral process have roles. I don’t expect the REC to assume the position of the tribunal, so he should have declared the results even yesterday.”
Recall, the announcement of the results was postponed to Monday following the reactions that trialled the result from Nkanu East LGA, which is the country home of PDP guber candidate Peter Mba.
Before the announcement of Nkanu East’s results, Labour Party’s candidate Chijioke Edeoga was slightly leading across the remaining sixteen LGAs of the state. If the votes that came from Nkanu East were added, PDP would have emerged winner in the race.
Meanwhile, LP stakeholders are presently around the premises of the collation centre, urging INEC not to entertain overvoting. They claimed that the number of accredited voters was far below those that voted through manual accreditation and voting.
PDP supporters in the state are however optimistic that the outcome will favour them. One of them wrote, “PDP lost seven House of Representatives seats to LP. We also lost two senatorial seats to LP. Almost half of the state Assembly seats have gone to LP. Labour defeated incumbent governor Ugwuanyi and defeated incumbent senator Chimaroke Nnamani. Why can’t they lose guber to PDP?”
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