From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja

The Labour Party (LP) on Thursday, staged a protest at the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), requesting for the Certified True Copy (CTC) of the results of the Imo State governorship election.

Kennedy Ahanotu, the LP National Youth leader, and Athan Achonu, the party’s Imo Gubernatorial candidate, led the demonstration.

Speaking at the scene of the protest, Achonu maintained that he had won by a wide margin and accused the Commission of tampering with the results of the Imo polls.

Ahanotu questioned why it took three days to declare the results of the Bayelsa State election whereas the Imo results were announced hastenly.

He stated that the Labour Party had written to the Commission since Monday, requesting the CTC of the election results, but that they had not received any response.

According to him, “We won that election by a landslide. INEC to our greatest shock and surprise, by 10am that day, had started uploading pre-written results into their portal. So, when collation started, our state collation agent duly asked INEC not to announce any results because collation started very early that day even while people were still voting. They uploaded to the IREV even while voting was taking place. So how did that happen?

“Our agent asked them to go to their backend server and confirm the results that they were about to announce, that they were not correct but INEC refused. The returning officer insisted because he had an agenda.

Achonu further pointed out that: “Bayelsa that has just eight local governments took them three days to announce their state result, while Imo state that has 27 local governments took them just two hours to announce the result.

“They hurriedly announced the result of that election even before the seven days that were allowed for review had passed.

“So, we duly wrote to INEC asking them to review that election. On Monday, we wrote to the Commission asking them to give us access to the same result that they claim that we lost, but up till today, we have not received permission to collect the CTC of that election.

“So, we are going to march into INEC now and collect our CTC by ourselves.

Also speaking, Kennedy lamented the fact that INEC, which ought to be the backbone of democracy, was now perceived as politica

“INEC is supposed to be the conscience and soul of democracy. INEC is supposed to be as neutral as water. But today, we see INEC bending towards taking a side in the matter they are refereeing”. He said.

On his part, the chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu two who was represented by two National Commissioners, Muhammed Haruna, and Prof Abdullahi Zuru addressed the protesting LP members begging them to maintain calmness.

Yakubu asked the demonstrators to return to the INEC headquarters by 3 p.m. on the same day that the documents would be made a to them.