.As Tinubu floors Atiku, Obi in Kwara, Ondo, loses Osun
The Peoples Democratic Party PDP on Monday made to stop the collation of presidential election results at the National Collation Centre in Abuja, saying it did not come to the centre to endorse the alleged electoral malfeasance which took place at the lower levels of collation.
PDP agents, Senator Dino Melaye and Chief Emeka Ihedioha in their submissions challenged the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu to project unto the screen the polling units level results as uploaded on the server.
Melaye had earlier challenged the presidential election result from Ekiti state which was presented yesterday, saying the figures did not add up.
Although, Prof. Yakubu asked him to concentrate on the instant case which was the Kwara election result that had just been presented, Melaye quoted Section 65(c) of the Electoral Act, saying the INEC Chairman has the power to review his complaints.
The section which deals with declaration of scores of candidates and the return of a candidate states that; "Provided that the Commission shall have the power within seven days to review the declaration and return where the Commission determines that the said declaration and return was not made voluntarily or was made contrary to the provisions of the law, regulations and guidelines, and manual for the election.”
Agent of the All Progressives Congress APC, Babatunde Ogala who countered the PDP agent, said since the Ekiti result had been declared, the next line of action for the PDP was to approach the courts.
Melaye who was however soon supported by several other agents including those of the Labour Party LP, argued that the results were only presented to the INEC Chairman and not yet declared by the chairman himself.
Hon. Umar Farouk Ibrahim, National Secretary and Presidential agent of the Labour Party also aligned with Melaye.
"We are also making our calculation and observation based on the Ekiti state result and we have also come with a similar figure as presented by the PDP and as such there is obvious over voting. We also call for that result to be looked at and finally rejected ", he stated.
Presidential agent for Action Alliance, Kenneth Udeze on his part also queried the figures from Ekiti.
He said; "This calculation and position of my colleagues here, Action Alliance has gone through that same figure and we got the same similar position. We will like the commission to look at it and the Ekiti state result should be cancelled for over voting based on our calculations ".
Yakubu faulted the figures provided by Melaye for Ekiti state, and again read out the correct figures as entered into the result sheets.
Speaking in an interview after a brief meeting with other agents, Melaye fell short of saying that all the agents had agreed to stage walk out.
He said; "A few minutes ago, we raised the issue of the fact that in accordance with the provision of the Electoral Act, Section 60 and Section 64 of the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended) that there will be transmission of results from the polling units. And then INEC chairman has repeatedly told Nigerians that there will be transmission of a lot of results from polling units directly to the server.
"We find out that this has not been done. INEC failed in this regard. And when this issue was raised today, supported by other party agents, the national chairman of INEC evaded vehemently because what Section 47(3) emphasizes is that wherever that the BVAS failed, if they cannot get a replacement, election should be cancelled in those areas.
"And we have seen from the presentation of the results from yesterday that some places were cancelled as a result of bypassing BVAS. So the only way to detect that BVAS have been bypassed is for us to see the uploaded results.
"And we insisted that the chairman should show us here now the uploaded results state by state just like the way they are displaying the collated results they are presenting and that is the only way to test the veracity and authenticity of this results.
"If not, we are only here to endorse the fraud that has been done from the units to the world to the states. We are not here to rubber stamp infractions. We are not here to rubber stamp the abnormalities that have been done. We are here to check them but the national chairman of INEC is not given us opportunity to question what they are doing. He is saying that all has been done meaning we are here to rubber stamp and we are going to prove that we are not here to rubber stamp. We have no other country to call our home but this country, we are going to do everything humanly possible to make sure that the right thing must be done.
"We have just met now with other political parties and we are going to make a presentation by the time we resume and if they insist that they are not going to respond to us then you will see the action we will take.
"We will not allow it. We have suffered a lot of pain in this country, suffered poverty, hunger, kidnapping, killings. We will not allow a continuation of failure. We must make sure that the right thing is done.
"Nigerians are watching, the world is watching, even the dead are watching to see what INEC will do, but the battle to make sure that only authentic results will be announced here today is a battle of no retreat, no surrender".
Meanwhile, results from three states were on Monday afternoon collated. The states are Kwara, Ondo and Osun.
In Kwara, APC Presidential Candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu polled 263,572; PDP's Atiku Abubakar, 136,909 and Labour Party's LP Peter Obi, 31,166.
In Ondo, Tinubu garnered 369,924; Atiku, 115,463; Obi, 47,350.
In Osun, Atiku came tops with 354, 366 votes; Tinubu, 343,945; and Obi, 23,283.
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