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From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
A group, Labour Party (LP) Coalition for True Democracy, yesterday, said what happened in the Adamawa State gubernatorial election can be likened to that of Enugu State but lamented how unfortunately the two scenarios were handled differently.
Spokeperson of the coalition, Ken Asogwa at a press briefing in Abuja, said one had expected the INEC to cancel the results of the polling units in Nkanu East LGA where there were manifest over-voting, in line with S.51 (2) of the Electoral Act which stipulates that where there is established incident of over-voting in any polling unit, the returning officer had the obligation under the law to cancel the elections in those polling units and order a rerun.
He also claimed that at the time of declaration of the results, there were a total number of 21,156 persons with PVCs yet to cast their votes across the state because elections did not hold in their polling units due to violence.
He claimed the injustices overlooked or condoned in the March 18 poll in Enugu State was y what emboldened the Adamawa Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) to attempt to usurp the powers of the Adamawa State Returning Officer in such a shameful, disgraceful and shambolic manner.
“The REC in Adamawa must have reasoned that if INEC National Chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, could easily usurp the powers of the Enugu State Returning Officer by constituting a committee that strangely sat to deduct and award votes to candidates, in flagrant disobedience to the provisions of the Electoral Act, he too could do the same and get away with it.”
Asogwa recalled that in the Enugu poll, after the collation of 16 LGAs out of the 17 LGAs of the state, the Labour Party candidate, Chijioke Edeoga, was leading with over 11,000 votes.
“This lead by the Labour Party was in consonance with the results of the other declared elections in the state wherein the Labour Party won 2 of the 3 senatorial seats in the State; 7 out of the 8 Rep seats in the State and 14 out of the 24 seats in the State House of Assembly. Where then lies the path to victory for the PDP in that election, judging from the above established voting pattern?” He quarried.
He said the electorate and other observers were shocked how PDP was awarded a whopping 30,000 votes at Nkanu East LGA, the LGA of the PDP candidate.
“According to the figures from the INEC BVAS, Nkanu East LGA recorded a total number of 15,000 accredited voters on the Election Day. However, when votes were declared, the PDP was allocated a total number of 30,350 votes while a total number of 1,855 was credited to the Labour Party.”
He questioned how INEC could have turned out over 33,000 votes in Nkanu East LGA that had only about 15,000 accredited voters and alleged the ready answer was that the Electoral Act was literally thrown under the bus by writing results without recourse to the BVAS.
“Recall that in the final result as declared by the INEC, the candidate of the PDP purportedly polled a total number of 160,895 votes while the candidate of the Labour Party polled a total of 157,552 votes. In other words, the candidate of the PDP purportedly won by 3,343 votes.
“From the above analysis, it is therefore glaring that the above figure of 21,156 is substantial enough to affect the final outcome of the election, yet INEC curiously rushed to return a winner without conducting a supplementary election as they did in Adamawa. In addition, the number of cancelled votes far exceeded the margin of lead between the candidate of the Labour Party and the PDP. Kindly note that the Electoral Act provides that when the number of cancelled votes exceeds the margin of lead, a rerun should be conducted in the affected unit(s) before a return could be made. Notwithstanding these clear provisions, the INEC in Enugu bizarrely returned a winner in an election that was literally inconclusive,” he said.
