LP Demands Release Of CTC Of Imo Guber Results

By Georgina Humphrey

Labour Party, LP, has protested the failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to release the Certified True Copy, CTC, of the governorship election result in the November 11th gubernatorial election in Imo state to the party.

The party’s Gubernatorial candidate in the just concluded election in Imo state, Senator Athan Achonu and the National Youth leader of the party, Kennedy Ahanotu, made this known when they led protesters to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, headquarters in Abuja.

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.

Senator Achonu who stressed that they were at the INEC headquarters to let the whole world hear their voice called on the INEC chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmoud to intervene in their request.

Achonu who maintained that he had won by a wide margin accused the Commission of tampering with the results of the Imo polls, questioning why it took three days to declare the results of the Bayelsa State election whereas the Imo results were announced hastenly.

“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? Senator Achonu stressed.

“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 governorship results, 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” Senator Achonu added.

On his part, National Youth leader of the party, Kennedy Ahanotu, lamented the fact that INEC, which ought to be the backbone of democracy, was now perceived as political.

“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, Professor Mahmood Yakubu who was represented by two National Commissioners, Muhammed Haruna, and Prof Abdullahi Zuru addressed the protesting LP members begging them to maintain calmness while appealing to them to return to the INEC headquarters by 3 p.m. so the documents would be made available to them.

Edited By Grace Namiji