TheCable

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Delta says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is “scared” of attempts to verify results announced by collation officers with the data on the result viewing portal (Irev) for the state’s governorship election.

Timi Tonye, spokesperson of Delta APC campaign organisation, in a statement on Sunday, alleged that the PDP was attempting to cover up the “manipulation” that took place in the election.

BACKGROUND

Sheriff Oborevwori, candidate of the PDP, was declared the winner of the March 18 election with 360, 234 votes.  Oborevwori defeated Ovie Omo-Agege of the APC, who polled 240, 229 votes.

However, the APC rejected the outcome of the election alleging that the collation of the election results was not in line with the electoral act of 2022.

On Friday, Charles Aniagwu, spokesperson of the PDP presidential campaign council in Delta, criticised the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over alleged directives aimed at frustrating the procedure for issuance of certified true copies (CTC) of form EC8A.

EC8A is the INEC form used for recording election results at the polling unit level.

Aniagwu claimed that the INEC headquarters had directed the resident electoral commissioners (REC) in states to ensure comparison with its result viewing portal data before the issuance of CTC of form EC8A.

He asked INEC to do the right thing by allowing the states, which were the original source of the documents, to issue CTC of form EC8A without comparing it with the Irev data.

APC REACTION

Reacting to the development, the APC in the state claimed that the demand by Aniagwu is a “blatant breach” of provisions of the electoral act.

“Mr Aniagwu is demanding from INEC, a blatant breach of the provisions of the electoral law which spells out clearly the process of collating and announcing the results of the governorship election,” the statement reads.

“It is most ridiculous for anyone to request INEC not to implement the electoral law and INEC’s own rules in regard to issuing of the certified true copies of results of the governorship election in Delta State.

“It is even more absurd to impugn ‘circumvention of justice’ in the statement the PDP issued when in truth they are the people that are attempting to pervert justice by their now notorious BVAS by-pass in the just concluded elections.

“The impudence and mendacity of that demand are offensive and deeply insulting to the sensibilities of the Delta State electorates who have been cheated out of the true results of the election they keenly participated in.

“The PDP, their sympathizers, and co-travelers are aware of the egregious falsifications of the results of the Delta state governorship election and the utter falsehood in the announced results, wants the bogus and falsified results published by the collation officers in the state’s INEC office to stand and not controverted by the correct counts of accreditations recorded by IReV.

“The Delta state PDP does not want the upload of results from across the state into the national database BVAS to be used to verify the results published by the Delta state collation officers. This is the reason PDP wants the certified true copy of the election result issued in Asaba.

“The fear of verification of the announced results has petrified the PDP. The sheer volume of the diabolism, rigging, and other actions to steal an election PDP clearly lost must be resisted by every patriotic citizen of Delta State.

“As we proceed to seek justice in the matter of the 2023 governorship election, we ask the citizens of the state to be vigilant, steadfast, and rally around the APC to safeguard democracy in Delta State and the integrity of the 2023 governorship election. We are determined to return the stolen mandate to the true winner of the 2023 governorship election.”