— Say Umpire Has Compromised The Process
— We are Not Boycotting The Process – -APC, SDP, Accord Others
The credibility of the 2023 presidential election was called to question as ten political parties on Monday staged a walkout on the presidential result collation exercise holding at the International Conference Center, Abuja alleging irregularities.
The parties also demanded the outright and total cancellation of the entire process, alleging that the electoral umpire has joined a party in the election and compromised the entire process
Led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party, PRP, and others the parties claim that the electoral umpire has demonstrated a lack of neutrality expected of it in the whole exercise.
Expectedly , the All Progressives Congress, led other to endorse the collation process. Other parties that sanctions the process include SDP, YPP, NRM, ACC, NNPP , APM, AA and some others have declared theei confidence in the process, saying they are not boycotting the collation
Prior to their staging a boycott the opposition political parties had during the morning session demanded the simultaneous display of polling unit results as uploaded into the INEC server and the collated results being presented by the State Presidential Collation Officers.
They also called on the umpire to exercise powers granted it by the Electoral Act and review cases of disruption and destruction of opposition votes in many states.
On resumption of proceeding they renewed their demand which was rejected by the Chairman of INEC who insisted that the process,once started must be concluded.
Prof Yakubu however requested the aggrieved political parties to submit to the commission any complaints that would necessitate such review.
Not satisfied with the stance of the commission’s chairman,the parties stormed.
Explaining the action of the opposition parties , Umar Farouk, National Secretary of the Labour Party said the party would not be part of a charade whose only aim is to endorse an illegality.
He said the Labour party votes were openly stolen while the umpires deliberately refused results won by the party at polling unit level to be uploaded into the server.
Also speaking Senator Dino Melaye, agent of the PDP said the credibility of the poll is now in doubt and that party will not be part of it.
Giving reasons for the boycott, Melaye said it was surprising that 72 hours after the election, the result of the poll has not been posted on INEC server.
“What I said in the morning was that when the State collation officers are making their presentation, we want to have two portals , we want to see the results that were uploaded to the portal as against the manual presentation made by the State Collation officers. This will help us interrogate whatever is being presented because we know that the transmission of the results straight from the BVAS is the most authentic way and that is the reason why the electoral act was amended abinitio .
“It was amended to create transparency, it was amended to give credibility and viability to the process. And if Nigerians have spent hundreds of billions of naira to introduce electronic transmission of results, and if Nigerian Lawmakers have amended the Act to accommodate electronic transmission and distribution of results, and now that is not being done as against the promise by INEC.
“It shows there was foul play, and we insisted that that should be donee and the INEC chairman categorically told us he is not going to do it. So because of that we are staging a walkout and we are calling for the outright cancelation of the whole process.
The way forward is outright cancellation and our staging a walkout is a dent on the credibility of the process.
What we are telling our voters and supporters is that the umpire has taken side ,the umpire has colluded with APC, the umpire is not transparent, the umpire is not neutral , that is why we cannot be part of this illegality ” Dino stressed.
