The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has rejected the call by the Labour Party (LP), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) for the INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to resign.

The commission also said the allegation by Senator Dino Melaye that the INEC chairman allocated scores to political parties during the ongoing collation of 2023 presidential election results, was unfounded and irresponsible.

The three opposition parties had earlier on Tuesday passed a vote of no confidence in the INEC chairman and even called for his resignation.

But, reacting to the call in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, the chief press secretary to the INEC chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, said contrary to the insinuations by the political parties, election results emanating from the States of the Federation were free, fair and credible.

He said, “There are laid down procedures for aggrieved parties or candidates to follow when they are dissatisfied about the outcome of an election

“Such procedures do not include calling on the INEC Chairman to resign or for the election to be cancelled.

“To be sure, aggrieved parties are free to approach the courts to ventilate their concerns and wait for the matter to be resolved. Making inciting comments capable of causing violence or unrest is unacceptable.”

He noted that the 2023 general election processes were at their final stages of completion.

“It is only fair for aggrieved parties to allow the conclusion of the process and approach the courts with their evidence to pursue their cases,” he added.

Following allegations of rigging, three political parties (Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Labour Party, LP, and African Democratic Congress, ADC) on Tuesday demanded a fresh election.

The aggrieved political parties alleged that the February 25 presidential election has been “irretrievably compromised”.

According to them, the refusal of the INEC chairman to respect the upload of results electronically as stipulated by Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022 is unacceptable.

LP National Chairman, Julius Abure; the PDP National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu; as well as their ADC counterpart, Ralph Nwosu, made this known at a joint press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.

They alleged that Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections were manipulated by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at polling units by their failure to upload results electronically on the commission’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV).

Abure, who spoke on behalf of the LP, PDP and the ADC, said, “This election is not free and far from being fair”, adding that there are “ongoing cancellation of results from areas of strength of the opposition parties”.

They declared a vote of no confidence in INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, and asked him to immediately step aside for an unbiased person to take over and conduct a fresh election.

The LP, PDP and ADC said the deliberate refusal of the INEC chairman to respect the upload of results electronically as stipulated by Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022 is unacceptable.

The three parties said the result so far by INEC showed “monumental disparities” between what the party agents signed and what INEC officials announced in Abuja.

They said the manual transmission of results compromised the integrity of the election process.

Also, Ayu said the INEC should not turn himself to a “dictator” and demanded that he step aside for another person to take over.

The agents of the PDP and the LP stormed out of the National Collation Centre for the presidential election results at the International Conference Centre in Abuja on Monday.

A member of the 8th National Assembly from Kogi West Senatorial District, Dino Melaye; and a former governor of Imo State, Emeka Ihedioha; an agent of the Labour Party, amongst others staged a walkout on the INEC chairman over dissatisfaction on the process of the collation of results from state collation officers for the presidential election (SCOPs).

The drama ensued around 4:30pm on Monday at the resumed collation exercise of the February 25 presidential election results for the second day.

Melaye, Ihedioha, as well as the agents of the Labour Party and others, had complained that the results presented by INEC SCOPs weren’t uploaded on IReV as repeatedly promised by the electoral umpire before the February 25 presidential poll.

Melaye argued strongly that without the upload of results electronically on IReV, this year’s election was not in any way different from the manual transmission of results done in 2015.

The victory of  Adegboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the Osun State Election Petition Tribunal is being threatened with fresh revelations by a former Director of Voter Education and Publicity of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi..

READ ALSO:Tribunal Sacks Adeleke, Declares Oyetola Osun Governor

Thetribunal judgment sacked Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party as the winner of the 2022 governorship election in the state.

The tribunal had on Friday ruled and nullified the election of Adeleke and directed INEC to withdraw his certificate of return and issue a new one to Adegboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress.

READ ALSO:Oyetola Left Behind Over N40b Debts – Adeleke

But during an appearance on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on Monday, Osaze-Uzzi said the discrepancy in the 2022 Osun State governorship election, as it related to the BVAS, was owing to the fact that the APC obtained an incomplete report upon which the judgement was based.

“The second member [of the tribunal] – the Honourable Justice who dissented from his two colleagues – said, ‘I would rather use the primary source of this information, and the primary source of this data is actually the machine itself.

“lt is basically a computer. So, rather than go to the server where it transmitted data, I would use the printout from the machine itself,” he said.

He added: “The machines were tendered, so were the reports from the server, and there ought not to have been a discrepancy, but somewhere along the line, not all the data had been transmitted at the time the APC obtained the certified copy of the initial server report.”

“It was BVAS that exposed that as it were, and the fact that the BVAS report was relied on. But we have to be careful; which of the BVAS reports was relied on? Was it what was transmitted to the server – to the backend – or was it the BVAS itself?”, he further stated.e

He said there was a need to break the verdict of the tribunal, adding that the majority of the tribunal members – “the chairman and the second member” – relied on the initial report and the initial report of the backend, duly certified by INEC.

Osaze-Uzzi explained that the APC obtained a certified copy of the initial server report while the remaining data was transmitted by the BVAS hardware.

“It was downloaded from the server [after it was] transmitted. But a couple of days later – INEC used the word ‘synchronised’, I’m not too sure I like that word, but – you synchronise it and say, ‘Have all the results been transmitted – has all data been transmitted from the machine, BVAS itself, to the server?’

“The machine is a physical one and then it transmits to a physical one. It now went, checked and said, ‘There’s a problem here.’ The BVAS report now downloaded itself, [we] now brought it out and examined each BVAS machine and now found out that no, some data was not transmitted to the server,” the ex-INEC director said.

Osaze-Uzzi, however, encouraged stakeholders to be optimistic about the use of BVAS as it exposed the over-voting in the election as ruled by the tribunal, describing the judgement as a validation of the role BVAS has played in enhancing the electoral process.

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