The Labour Party governorship candidate for Imo State, Athan Achonu, has led his supporters to the national headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja to demand the true certified copy of the gubernatorial election conducted on November 11 in the state.
This is coming two weeks after INEC declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Governor Hope Uzodimma, as the winner of the election.
Uzodimma polled 540,308 votes to beat both Samuel Anyanwu of the Peoples Democratic Party, who scored 71,503 votes, and Achonu had 64,081 votes.
Achonu accused INEC of playing double standard in the off-cycle election. Accompanying him for the protest was the National Youth Leader, Kennedy Ahanotu.
The protesters chanted solidarity songs and displayed various banners that read “INEC Give Us Our CTC”, “Respect Our Law”, and “INEC Has Become Headache to Nigerian People”.
Addressing newsmen in front of the INEC building, Achonu accused the commission of deliberately refusing to give him a copy of the Imo poll CTC because they had something to hide.
He said, “When collation started after the voting, our state election agent duly asked INEC not to announce any result that collation started very early that day even when voting was going on. They were even uploading results on iREV when voting was taking place. So how did that happen? They were told to go to their backend server and confirm the result they were about to announce. But INEC refused to do that. The returning insisted they should go on because they had a hidden agenda.
“Meanwhile it took Bayelsa which has just eight local governments almost three days to announce their result. But in Imo which has 27 local governments, it took them just two hours to announce the result that was already uploaded.
“So we duly wrote to INEC asking them to review the election. They hurriedly announced the result, even before the seven days allowed for review lapsed. Up till today when we are speaking, we have not received the certified copy of that result despite writing them officially. We will not leave here today until we collect the CTC since INEC has refused to come out and address us.”
Two INEC national commissioners, Mohammed Haruna and Prof Abdullahi Abdu Zuru, who addressed the protesters, urged them to exercise patience.
“We understand you have come here with a petition. The national chairman (Prof Yakubu Mahmood) asked the two of us to come here on his behalf on behalf to receive your petition. And I assure you (it will be addressed because this is your right.
“The CTC you requested is always collected at the state level. So we have a copy of your letter here now, I assure you it will attended to,” he stated.
