The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged that the All Progressives Congress (APC) is mounting pressure on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Anugbum Onuoha, in Edo State to suspend the collation of Saturday’s governorship election results.
“Intelligence available to the PDP indicates that the APC is mounting pressure on the INEC Chairman and Edo State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) to suspend the collation process so as to make way for the manipulation of the INEC Portal and replace the real results from the Units with fabricated figures in favour of the APC,” PDP spokesman Debo Ologunagba said in a statement.
The PDP charged the commission to resist “pressure by the APC and ensure that nobody tampers with the results as obtained from the Polling Units”.
The PDP also alleged that “the APC is mounting pressure on the military to withdraw from their positions so as to enable the APC convey its armed thugs to disrupt and manipulate the collation process”.
The PDP warned that “the people of Edo State already have authentic results from the Polling Units across the state and that any attempt by anybody or group whatsoever to alter the results will inflame the already charged situation with very severe consequences on perpetrators”.
“INEC and the APC must note that any attempt to change the results of the Edo State governorship election will provoke worse consequences as the people have indicated their readiness to use every means allowed in a democracy including legitimate physical confrontation, if necessary to protect their votes,” the party added.
Meanwhile, the electoral umpire has uploaded over 98% of polling unit result sheets of Saturday’s governorship election on the commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
Out of the 4519 polling units, the electoral umpire has uploaded the result sheets of 4435 polling units on the portal as of 02:00 am on Sunday.
Though 17 candidates are jostling for the office, analysts have described the forthcoming poll as a three-horse race involving PDP’s Asue Ighodalo, Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party (LP).