APGA candidate rejects Enugu governorship election results

The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Enugu State, Frank Nweke Jr, has rejected the 18 March governorship election results in the state declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Mr Nweke Jr, a former Nigeria’s minister of information, disclosed this during a press conference on Friday.

The APGA candidate posted the text of the press conference on his verified Twitter handle.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state, Peter Mbah, was declared winner of the election on Wednesday night.

Mr Mbah polled 160,895 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Chijioke Edeoga of the Labour Party (LP) who scored 157,552 votes.

Mr Nweke Jr garnered 17,983 votes to come third, while the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Uche Nnaji, placed fourth, with 14,575 votes.

The former minister said the election was not free and fair and that there were cases of threats and intimidation of voters in the state.

‘How they did it’

He also claimed that town criers had, in the morning of the Election Day, travelled through several communities in the state “ordering” anyone who would not vote for the PDP to “stay home.”

“At various polling units across the State, PDP thugs, party members, hired criminals and some compromised members of the police and military threatened voters at polling units and chased those who could not be bought over or intimidated into voting for the PDP,” Mr Nweke Jr said.

He also claimed that the most vulnerable and impoverished became prey to vote buying by the PDP and LP, adding that the PDP further secured the assistance of the INEC agents to rig the election by offering cash or issuing threats as the situation demanded.

“Only a few polling unit agents uploaded their results directly on IREV as provided by INEC, and fake result sheets were used to rewrite and manipulate the results of vote counts at the polling units before the falsified results of the elections were uploaded to the IREV. Some of these result sheets are also completely blurred on the portal,” he stated.

The APGA candidate claimed the collation of results at various local government headquarters were “hijacked” by thugs and agents of the PDP and that gunshots were fired sporadically at Nkanu West Collation Centre in Agbani.

Initial controversies

PREMIUM TIMES reported that the collation of results from Nsukka and Nkanu East – two local government areas which were earlier suspended on Monday by the INEC irregularities – were completed before the declaration of the winner.

The LP agent, Eugene Edeoga, had alleged, in a petition to the commission, that the Bimodal Voter Registration System (BVAS) machine was not used during the election in the Nkanu East Council Area and that there was a case of overvoting.

His PDP counterpart, Festus Uzo, made a similar allegation against results from Nsukka Council Area.

However, INEC overruled his petition during a review of the results, but sustained the allegation by Mr Edeoga, the LP agent, according to Maduebibisi Iwe, the returning officer for the election.

Mr Iwe, a professor and the vice-chancellor of the University of Agriculture Umudike, said although the commission established that the BVAS machines were used during the election in Nkanu East Council Area, it discovered that there were cases of over voting in the area.

The commission, he said, consequently reduced the result from 30,350 votes earlier given to the PDP candidate to 16,956 votes, after its review of the results from the council area.

It also increased the LP candidate’s initial score of 1855 votes in the council area to 1864 votes.

But Mr Nweke Jr, the APGA candidate, said the entire process – up to the declaration of the winner – was “a complete farce” and lacks legitimacy.

“The results of Nkanu East Local Government Area, which were contested, got reviewed and revised by the national office of INEC without any basis given for the change in numbers. If it was a case of over-voting, the expectation is that the result from the local government area should have been cancelled.

“It does seem that the numbers were simply manufactured to fit a preprogrammed outcome and read out to the public, as can be inferred from the Returning Officer of INEC in the state, Prof Maduebibisi Ofo Iwe’s comments about acting under authority and reading out what he had been given,” he stated.

Mr Nweke Jr vowed to continue engaging the system no matter how long it takes until he recovers his mandate.

“We will explore and exhaust every action required to ensure the legitimacy of the next government in Enugu State,” he stated.