Senator Athan Achononu of the Labour Party (LP) has raised serious allegations against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) following the Imo State governorship election held 19 days ago.
In a statement, Senator Achononu accused INEC of obstructing access to vital election materials crucial for his case at the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal in a startling revelation.
The LP candidate expressed frustration at INEC’s refusal to allow inspection of the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (B-VAS) despite a court order.
He alleged that the move was orchestrated as a deliberate delay tactic by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to hinder his petition filing, possibly leading to its dismissal on technical grounds.
Senator Achononu called upon President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to compel INEC to uphold transparency in the electoral process.
His words: “What is happening right now is that we went to the Tribunal, got an order for us to be allowed to inspect the BVAS. INEC has refused to let us inspect the BVAS up till now.
“Lawyers and experts were hired at a very huge cost per day N30 million; they are not allowing us to inspect it despite court order”.
During the stakeholders meeting, Senator Achononu said that the INEC Chairman pledged that election result collations would start from the ward to the local government before the state but lamented that collation never took place in any ward.
He accused INEC of colluding with the ruling party in the state to announce results that were not signed even when party agents were raising objections about the credibility of those results.
“When we came to stakeholders meeting, we told the INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmoud, that there are certain things he needs to put in place for a smooth election.
“One is the removal of the REC. Secondly is that collation must take place at the ward level, local government level before the state level.
We insisted that the result sheets must be signed by three officers, a national commissioner, the REC and each EO will sign that of his local government so that there will be no manipulation of the result sheets, and he agreed.
“But surprisingly on the election day, there was no collation at the ward level, even in some local government. They moved everything to the state and in those places where there were insecurity and no election, results were collated, there were cluster voting in Orsu,” Achononu lamented.
The LP candidate, however, expressed slight hope that he will get justice in the judiciary, saying that all hope is not lost.
