Demands cancellation of Rivers election

From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja

Labour Party (LP) has protested what it tagged electoral robbery in Rivers State and called for outright cancellation of the Saturday election.

The LP National Chairman, Julius Abure, in a statement at the weekend, said the leadership of the party was shocked by the revelations emanating from the state after the presidential and National Assembly elections which held on Saturday; where thugs believed to be agents of the state government invaded various polling units and collation centres, took away election materials, including the results sheets, manipulated the BVAS machines and uploaded fake results in to the central portal.

“We took particular note of incidences in places like Obio/Akpor, Khana, Eleme, Obigbo, Rumukoro and several other areas where Labour Party was clearly leading in virtually all the polling units with very wide margins. Governor Nyesom Wike, faced with stark reality of defeat even in the polling units in his compound in Worji, where LP scored 323 votes against APC and PDP’s 5 and 2 votes respectively, he used the soldiers and police to intimidate, harassed and snatched ballot papers.

“Nigerians went into this election based on the assurances by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that the deployment of BVAS was a perfect antidote to electoral malpractices in Nigeria, but what transpired across Nigeria, if allowed to stand is purely a betrayal of trust by millions of Nigerians on INEC.

“INEC’s staff were intimidated by these thugs in connivance with the military personnels and police officers who were deployed to protect them, into doing their bidding and were forced to manipulate the BVAS, being afraid of the consequences of their refusal. Some of these manipulations happened way into late in the night. We demand that INEC investigate these atrocities against Nigerian voters by the political class.

“We are, therefore, asking that INEC should rise to the occasion and cancel all the unverified and manipulated results arising from the presidential and National Assembly elections in parts of Rivers State particularly in places like Obio/Akpor, Khan.”