The Labour Party, LP, candidate during the Enugu State governorship election, Barr. Chijioke Edeoga has again demanded the outright cancellation of the results generated from Nkanu East Local Government Area.
In a petition addressed to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Edeoga said the non-usage of BVAS rendered the results from Nkanu East a nullity.
He said the total number of accredited results in the INEC server shows that the PDP allocated votes to its candidate, Barr. Peter Mbah.
He said, “The just concluded Enugu State Governorship election is fraught with serial irregularities and fundamental flaws in the conduct of the Governorship election held on 18th March, 2023, particularly with respect to Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State.
“We humbly wish to bring these irregularities to the attention of the Returning Officer for appropriate action as provided in the Electoral Act of 2022.
“The Electoral Act and guidelines made pursuant thereto provides that the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) 1s to be used for the conduct of the Gubernatorial and State Houses Election nation-wide.
“This is a mandatory requirement and failure to comply with these requirements renders any result of such election invalid. The Commission through several public service announcements reiterated the centrality
of the use of BVAS in the accreditation of voters through their permanent voters cards and in the transmission of the results directly from the polling units to the INEC portal.”
He added that the results collated by the Local Government Collation Officer were at variance with the results uploaded to the INEC IREV portal.
“As contained in the IREV, total votes purportedly cast in all the 14 Wards in Nkanu East Local Government was 20, 896, but the total result submitted is 32, 105.
“The unexplained discrepancies are as a result of non-usage of BVAS as mandatorily required by the Electoral Act and the guidelines of the electoral body, which led to the fraudulent allocation of votes to PDP by the officials appointed by INEC to conduct the election.
“No wonder the discrepancies between the votes they hurriedly uploaded to the IREV and the votes they presented for collation.”
He told the INEC that in several other polling units across the wards, the results collated clearly show that the votes allocated to the candidates are more than the total number of PVCs collected as a result of non-usage of the BVAS.
“It is evidently clear that the BVAS as required by the Electoral Act was not used for the voters’ accreditation. By virtue of the Electoral Act 2022 Sec. 47 (3), the results from the entire Nkanu East should be cancelled.
“We therefore urge the Returning Officer to cancel the results of Nkanu East Local Government Gubernatorial election which was conducted without the usage of BVAS as mandatorily required by the Act.
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