By Oginyi Ruth
The All Progressives Congress candidate for Ikwo/ Ezza South federal consistency in the last Saturday’s Presidential/National Assembly election in Ebonyi State, Comrade Chinedu Ogah has rejected the outcome of the election, alleging that the result figures were falsely written in favour of his opponent by INEC.
Ogah stated this on Wednesday in Abakaliki in Ebonyi State while addressing journalists, claiming that APC won the election, but was defrauded of victory by the electoral umpire.
He explained that APC scored over 27,800 votes from Card Readers’ accreditation as directed by the INEC, while the candidate of the PDP secured 13,000 votes, but the REC ordered for the cancellation of his results but didn’t cancel the results from Ezza south.
WARRI TODAY gathered that Ikwo local government has the highest number of registered voters in the state with 20 political wards and it is the only local government won by APC in Ebonyi State in the last weekend’s election.
INEC has announced Hon Lazarus Ogbe as the winner of the election having scored the highest votes of 31,296 as against 27,695 votes garnered by Ogah after the cancellation of some wards in Ikwo.
The APC candidate rejected the results alleging that original results from the polling units made available by APC’s agents from various units indicated that APC had a comfortable lead of over 45,000 in the election.
“The election in the constituency was conducted both manually and with card readers and the outcome showed APC leading with 45,000 votes to beat PDP which scored 17,000 votes.
“We scored 27,800 votes from card readers’ voting and 17,200 from manual voting which was resorted to when the card readers failed.
“If you compare 45,000 and 17,000, you will see that they did not even see our back in the election”, Ogah said.
He said rather than comply with the directive; the INEC Returning Officer connived with PDP, ad-hoc staff and security operatives to defraud him and APC of their victory.
“The resident commissioner’s directive urging electoral officers involved in the election to ensure that only results from card readers authenticated and verified voters were accepted was completely ignored.
“For the commission to back pedal, upheld result and even went ahead to declare the loser as winner is pure illegality and corruption”, he added.
Ogah, however, called his teeming supporters and the constituents to remain calm and law abiding as he had concluded plans to challenge the outcome of the election in court.
He added that he had already written an official petition to the national chairman of INEC for the cancellation of the results.
