- By Kamil Opeyemi
The Labour Party and the People’s Democratic Party on demanded for the resignation of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission Professor Mahmud Yakubu.
Also joined in the ongoing joint press conference was the African Democratic Congress.
They said the INEC has failed in its promise to conduct a free and fair election.
At the press conference were Chairmen of the Labour Party, Julius Abure, his PDP Counterpart Iyorchia Ayu,
They called on President Muhammadu Buhari to save the country by halting the process of the elections.
Abure said the parties are calling for an outright cancellation of the whole exercise because the whole process has been compromised.
In the course of the press conference, Dino Melaye, who is the agent of the PDP at the Collation Centre before he walked out on Monday, played a video where INEC Chairman had said that there was no going back
Ayu, while speaking also accused INEC of allocating scores to parties saying that even in some cases, the same votes were allocated to the parties in some states with no single difference.
Abure in his final submission said, “We are therefore constrained on this development to state that INEC compromised the integrity of this elections even before collation commenced at the polling units.
“Section 60 sub-section 5 of the Electoral Act says that the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including total number of accredited voter and the results of the ballots in a manner as prescribed by the commission.
“A failure to comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act and the guidelines makes it imperative that all results recently uploaded on the IReV portal must be updated before they are announced.
“INEC went back on that promise. This election is not free and far from being fair and transparent.
“We shall not be part of the electoral process currently going on at the National Collation Centre and we demand that this sham of an election be immediately cancelled.
“We also call for a fresh election to be carried out in accordance to the laid down INEC procedure.”
“We therefore call on Yakubu to step aside from his role,” the LP National Chairman, Julius Abure, who delivered the position of the three opposition parties, said.