The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and their supporters, on Monday, stormed the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja demanding the cancellation of the 25 February presidential election.
Led by its National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar and the Director General of his campaign and Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal, the party also submitted a petition to the commission.
They said the election was not credible.
INEC had on Wednesday declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, winner of the election.
The commission’s Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the results, said Mr Tinubu polled the majority votes of 8,794,726, while Atiku secured 6,984,520 votes, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) came third with 6,101,533 votes and Rabi’u Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) got 1,496,687 votes.
Altogether, 18 candidates contested the presidential election.
The PDP and Labour Party (LP) had rejected the results of the election during the collation of results and before Mr Tinubu was announced as the winner.
They also faulted the electoral commission for not uploading the polling unit results on the INEC result viewing (IReV) portal before the collation of results began.
The parties insisted that it is part of the promises repeatedly made by the commission and that it is backed by some section of the Electoral Act 2022.
Call for fresh election
Presenting the petition to INEC’s National Commissioner for Voter Education and Information, Festus Okoye, on Monday, Mr Ayu asked the commission to cancel the election and conduct another one that will be respected by all.
“Cancel the election …and conduct a very credible election that will be respected not only by Nigerians but by the whole international community,” he said.
Mr Okoye, who received the letter on behalf of the INEC Chairman, said the commission will look into the issues raised and deal with them.
He assured that the electoral body will meet to address the issues raised where they need to be addressed.
Mr Okoye reiterated that INEC is a commission whose allegiance is to Nigerians and not to any political party or candidate.
“…I want to assure you that this commission is a listening commission. This commission is a public trust and this commission belongs to the Nigerian people. Our allegiance is to the people of the federal republic of Nigeria,” he said.
“This commission does not have any allegiance to any political party. We don’t have allegiance to any political party. We don’t have any allegiance to any candidate. Our allegiance is to the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The commission belongs to the Nigerian people and whatever grievances there are, we will look into all those grievances. If there are grievances that can be redressed, we will redress those grievances. But I want to please ask that all of us should continue to be peaceful and all us should continue to respect the integrity of the commission and also the integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but I want to most sincerely thank all of you for the peaceful way this protest has been conducted.
“I am going to go and hand over the protest letter to the chairman of the commission and I want to assure you that the commission will meet over this letter, look into it and address some of the issues.”
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