I’ve never seen this kind of rigging — Nwoye
Nwoye said: “I have been involved in many elections in this country since my secondary schools days and particularly in 1993 presidential election where Moshood Abiola emerged, I have never seen this type of rigging. I have never seen an election where the military men and police were harassing and intimidating voters, assisting the INEC and APGA agents to chase away the PDP members at the collation centres to write results.”
Nwoye was, however, countered by his party’s national secretariat which praised the conduct of the election. Addressing journalists in Awka yesterday, Nwoye said the outcome of the election was not acceptable to him as a candidate, just as he blamed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, for all the alleged lapses that characterised the election.
Nwoye berated the military and police personnel, alleging that they colluded with INEC and the state government to rig the election.
He said: “The election is far below average, heavily manipulated by INEC in collaboration with security agencies and the ruling party in Anambra State, to commit monumental fraud. It is an embarrassment to democracy and the people of Anambra State.
“I have never seen an election where security agents were harassing and intimidating voters, chasing eligible voters away. And at the end, over 70 per cent names were not found in the register.”
According to him, in Obosi area, the result sheets did not come with the other materials sent to polling centres and it was the same occurrence in Ogbaru, Nsugbe, Ihiala and the riverine areas.
The PDP candidate recalled that he had earlier complained to the INEC chairman about the various irregularities, adding that he immediately notified the Federal High Commissioner in charge of the South East and the zonal Chairman of PDP of his observations.
He called for the removal of the state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Prof. Chukwuemeka Onukaogu.
He said: “The election is far below average, heavily manipulated by INEC in collaboration with security agencies and the ruling party in Anambra State, to commit monumental fraud. It is an embarrassment to democracy and the people of Anambra State.
“I have never seen an election where security agents were harassing and intimidating voters, chasing eligible voters away. And at the end, over 70 per cent names were not found in the register.”
According to him, in Obosi area, the result sheets did not come with the other materials sent to polling centres and it was the same occurrence in Ogbaru, Nsugbe, Ihiala and the riverine areas.
The PDP candidate recalled that he had earlier complained to the INEC chairman about the various irregularities, adding that he immediately notified the Federal High Commissioner in charge of the South East and the zonal Chairman of PDP of his observations.
He called for the removal of the state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Prof. Chukwuemeka Onukaogu.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh while commending INEC for the good conduct of the election said: “The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hereby commends President Goodluck Jonathan for providing adequate security and the enabling environment for the conduct of credible, free and fair governorship election in Anambra state last Saturday in spite of any perceived hitch(es).
“In the same vein we commend the entire people of Anambra state and all stakeholders who played key roles in ensuring peaceful and orderly conduct of the process.
A statement released by the National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh while commending INEC for the good conduct of the election said: “The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hereby commends President Goodluck Jonathan for providing adequate security and the enabling environment for the conduct of credible, free and fair governorship election in Anambra state last Saturday in spite of any perceived hitch(es).
“In the same vein we commend the entire people of Anambra state and all stakeholders who played key roles in ensuring peaceful and orderly conduct of the process.
“While we now await the official result, we wish to express our satisfaction that the election was conducted without disturbances, despite the massive importation of political thugs by the All Progressives Congress (APC) as well as their heinous plots to introduce violence to disrupt and rig the poll having discovered that they have been rejected by the people.
“We also commend the candidate of our great party, Comrade Tony Nwoye for his resilience, grassroots appeal and credible outing which brought him to the forefront in the race despite having only two weeks to campaign. This is evident in the results so far released in which he roundly defeated the candidate of the APC who has been campaigning for four months before our candidate. The PDP is indeed happy with Comrade Tony Nwoye’s performance so far.
“While we charge all our members to continue to remain calm and focused, we wish to state that our final position on the election will be made known when the overall result is declared by INEC.”
The APC meanwhile, in a reaction to the development called for total cancellation of the election result saying that delivery of materials to strongholds of the APC was sabotaged.
In its reaction articulated by the party’s Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said:
“After consultations with our agents as well as with local and foreign observers, we have discovered that what we earlier complained about was a child’s play, compared to the widespread disenfranchisement that was orchestrated by the same body given the responsibility of ensuring a free, fair and creditable election on Saturday.”
Jega meanwhile yesterday alleged sabotage on the part of its officers during the election.
Speaking on AIT yesterday, the electoral chief said that a particular officer who masterminded the derailment of the distribution of election materials to Idemili North Local Government Area of the state has been identified and would be prosecuted.
He said:
“We made all the preparations and decentralised the process of distribution of materials in order to ensure that they get to the polling units in time for the commencement of the election. That was before Saturday.
“Unfortunately and regrettably – we are humans. We can do all the preparations, but if people are determined to subvert the process, one way or the other they will subvert it.
“So, they used our staff. I think we should be very careful when we have a staff of about 12,000 in INEC, when one person has committed an offence and then you use it to generalise or condemn everybody in INEC.
“Our Electoral Officer in charge of Idemili North Local Government, for inexplicable reasons, messed up the distribution of ballot box papers and result sheets. That was the cause of the delay in the distribution of materials in Idemili.
“All materials were to have been distributed by Friday evening, but for some odd reasons, they made sure that they held onto some of the result sheets, and they also gave wrong result sheets to different polling units.
“For Anambra election, as we did in Edo and Ondo, every polling unit has a unique result sheet. So, you cannot take one result sheet to a different place, because it will not work.
“I assured the stakeholders when we met in Awka that materials must get to the polling units before commencement of election.
“So, when we discovered at about 1am that there was this mix-up, and we tried to reach the Electoral Officer and the supervisor and there was confusion, and we knew something was fishy, we said there would be no deployment until we sorted out the problem.
“As I speak, we have handed over the Electoral Officer to the police because clearly what he did is a sabotage of the electoral process, including the Local Government supervisor.
“It took us until about 1pm to be able to sort out what they had jumbled up. We communicated with the community as at 1pm that we were ready to distribute to all the other wards, and materials were distributed.”
The three opposition candidates of PDP, APC and LP, at a joint press conference vowed to reject whatever result that would be announced by INEC from the elections in AnambraState.
The three candidates had earlier in the day expressed their dissatisfaction with the outcome of the election which is yet to be announced by INEC as at press time last night.
Ngige who was flanked by the other two and spoke on behalf of the trio said: ”Our stand is that Saturday election was characterized by fraud, malpractices and massive irregularities and we call on INEC to put in place another process to conduct a fresh election to enable the people of Anambra elect their governor that will take over from the present governor on March 17 next year.
“The irregularities clearly noticed included the omission of the names of many voters in the registers presented for the election in the over 4,000 polling units.
We were assured that the process will be free and fair during the stake holder’s meeting with the INEC Chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega, but little did we know that they had planned to disenfranchise many of our supporters by deleting their names from the register everywhere in the local government areas. It was so massive and we hereby reject the voters registers used for this election.
“We were assured by the INEC chairman that the electoral process would be transparent but we experienced was to the contrary.
“Thirdly we discovered that result sheets were translocated other than the purpose for which they were meant. For instance some result sheets meant for some polling booths in Idemili were taken to another area even when they were coded.
“There were massive. harassment and intimidation of voters and our party agents. The party agents’ accreditation cards were described as fake and they were hounded out hence we had no agents at most poling booths.
“There was massive deployment of money by APGA through its serving commissioners, party chieftains, contractors and some other individuals who were deployed to pay each voter as much as N10,000 to vote for APGA.
“Having noticed the various flaws …we have come to inevitable conclusion that this commission is determined to go back to its old ways and that the much gains made in 2011 election is being reversed.
“We, therefore, urge the INEC to cancel the charade called election conducted in Anambra and deploy transparent officials including a new Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC to conduct a fresh election in the state.
“No election result should be announced as the elections have not been concluded. What they are doing now is an exercise in futility.
“We are peace-loving people in Anambra state and they should not provoke the people to violence. A word is enough for the wise.”
Both Ubah and Nwoye said they all agreed to take a common position on the issue, insisting that the election should be cancelled.
TMG faults calls for cancellation
The Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) said yesterday that it would not subscribe to total cancellation of the Anambra Governorship Election.
The TMG is one of the observer groups that monitored the election held on Saturday across the state.
The TMG Chairman, Malam Zikirulahi Ibrahim, who was reacting to the problem in Idemili North where the election did not hold on Saturday and was rescheduled for Sunday.
In a telephone Interview, Ibrahim said that in spite of the problem, INEC performed well in some other areas where elections held.
“From our observation, we know the commission tried, but we also know areas where elections need to be repeated.”
“We, however, believe that INEC could have done better by holding the re-scheduled election on a working day instead of a Sunday, considering the religious belief of the people of the area.
“Our concern is that anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
Ibrahim advised INEC to let the entire World see that the issues arising from the Anambra poll were appropriately addressed
Olisah Metuh is just working for jonathan , thats all ..
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