Labour Party faults process, to challenge result

The Labour Party has faulted the process and collation of results of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections across the country, declaring that it will challenge the outcome in court.

According to the party, most of its members were deliberately disenfranchised through varied means across the country but were more discerning in its strongholds.

The National Secretary of LP, Alhaji Umar Ibrahim, in a statement in Kaduna on Sunday, said while the party made inroads with high votes in most parts of the North, her members were deliberately prevented from voting, chased away violently from polling units or had ballot papers and boxes destroyed and burnt in others.

He cited Lagos, Rivers, Bayelsa, Kano, Yobe, and Edo States as places where such acts were rampantly perpetrated in violation of the Electoral Act 2022 as amended.

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Ibrahim said in some places, INEC staff and electoral materials were not deployed to areas that are known to be strongholds of the Labour Party or deployed late to frustrate the party supporters who psychologically got tired of waiting and had to leave the polling units for the fear of the unknown.

“The delay by INEC to upload and announce results, especially where Labour Party, is already known to have taken lead, is also worrisome and we feel it is deliberate to anger our party and our supporters,” he said

Ibrahim also revealed that intelligence from the fields revealed that across the northern states, voters identified as LP supporters were tactically denied access to their polling units by some INEC ad hoc staff who connived with others to confuse the electorates by insisting their polling units were different and sending them to the wrongs ones.

This, he said, frustrated the voters and reduced the votes polled by the party, which would have more than doubled if the right things were done.

While calling on INEC to call its polling staff to order and also ensure punitive measures in line with the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended), the party scribe assured that the party would definitely challenge the outcome and final result in court.

He, however, called on the party members and supporters to be calm, remain law-abiding and mobilise even more for the next round of elections as the party takes steps to right the wrong meted out to her in the Saturday presidential and National Assembly elections.