By Amauche Agbo, Abakaliki
The All Progressives Congress, APC Ebonyi state chapter has called for the cancellation of results of the Saturday’s polls in the state.
The chairman of the party in the State, Chief Stanley Okoro Emegha disclosed this while addressing newsmen in Abakaliki, the State capital.
According to Emegha, based on certain electoral irregularities which were allegedly executed by the members of the opposition parties and bad eggs among the INEC staff, the state working committee of our party raised alarm demanding the cancellation of the results of the Saturday polls in four local government areas including Afikpo North, Ezza North, Ivo and Onicha.
While commending the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC in its effort to ensure free, fair and credible conduct of the elections in Ebonyi, Emegha however, accused some bad elements among the staff of the commission of conniving with the members of the opposition parties to manipulate the results of the Saturday polls in the state.
The State APC Boss also accused the security personnel of compromising their duties by allegedly conniving with the opposition parties to permeate electoral irregularities during the Saturday polls in some polling stations.
“When we were submitting our petitions, in some places, we discovered some irregularities. We have a Commissioner of Police whom we thought he is coming to change certain errors, but unfortunately, what we saw was a lot of compromises because he connived with the opposition parties.”
He noted that APC had vowed to follow the electoral guidelines, knowing fully well that after elections, come litigation, but frowned at the outcomes of the exercise in some council areas due to the alleged undue influence of the electoral officers with the opposition parties alongside the security agents against his party’s candidates.
“For example, in places like Afikpo North, there was a lot of manipulation by an opposition party, voiding our votes and many of the ballot papers were mutilated because you know the Afikpo North is the home of the PDP House of Representatives candidate.
“What the people were doing there was to connive with the Security agencies to void the ballot papers that were in favour of the APC by double thumb printing on them. I tell you if you do a forensic examination of the thumb printing on the ballot papers, you will find out the thumb printings are not the same. We decided not to go to a confrontational level but wrote to INEC for the cancellation of the results in Afikpo North, Ezza North, Onicha and Ivo LGAs where such things happened.”
Emegha lamented high handedness of the opposition parties against his party members leading to the alleged killing of the APC agents in Izzi LGA and further accused the security agencies especially the police of conniving with the opposition parties alongside the INEC ad-hoc staff to rig elections in some parts of the state.
He alleged that some Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS machines were malfunctioning still some were hidden in the INEC vehicles, and they later gave them to the opposition parties who had already collected PVCs from the electorate to vote on their behalf to favour the opposition parties’ candidates.”
In a related development, the Director General of the Divine Mandate Campaign Council, the APC campaign organisation in the state, Chief Austin Umahi accused the Labour Party candidate for Ebonyi South Senatorial District, Chief Linus Okorie and the State PDP Governorship Candidate, Chief Ifeanyi Odii of deploying political thugs to disrupt the Saturday polls in the state.
Umahi stated this at the campaign office of the state governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Francis Nwifuru in Abakaliki.
“On the issue of thuggery, Linus Okorie is an expert. More than 150 thugs, Linus brought to this state, 32 of them were with him when they were arrested. As I’m addressing you, the 32 thugs with two vehicles are in the Army Barracks. Linus Okorie and his thugs on Saturday went to every polling unit, where we have the strength to burn down our votes, and bundle our supporters in trucks and this happened mostly in Onicha LGA and Isu, the home town of the PDP governorship candidate, Ifeanyi Odii.”
He challenged the security Chiefs in the state to discharge their duty professionally, noting that some personalities in the state were allowed to be going around with security agents even when there was an order standing against it.