The Independent National Electoral Commission should take the blame for human and national losses attendant to the rerun of the Udenu/Igboeze North Federal Constituency of Enugu State.
A former Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Enugu State,Dr Ben Nwoye, stated this in Enugu on Wednesday ahead of the polls coming up this Saturday.
He said it was unfortunate that what led to the cancellation of the polls in almost 166 electoral polling units was caused by INEC, and “yet the electoral body has not been held responsible for the collosal damages.”
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He said, “The rerun is a result of a judicial intervention in the main election. It’s INEC’s failure to include the results of the APC in the result sheets in the affected polling units. INEC had claimed it was a printer’s error.
“It’s failure to do the needful caused enormous losses both for the contestants and taxpayers. How are we sure INEC won’t commit the same blunder again? Has INEC done the necessary checks this time around? INEC claims it prints result sheets outside the country. Don’t they have quality checks to have detected the omission for almost four years that they planned the failed one, leading to the rerun?
“INEC claims it is now ready, but don’t be surprised that glitches will come in during the exercise. Nobody trusts INEC. That is why party agents will be monitoring election materials from the Central Bank to police stations and to INEC office to ensure that untowards things don’t happen.”
He regretted that during the last polls, APC agents alerted INEC that their party logo was omitted in the affected areas, which INEC failed to act promptly and wondered “if someone paid INEC to exclude APC logo in the result sheets.”
Nwoye listed some of the ugly consequences of INEC’s shortcomings, stating, “The people of the constituency currently don’t have representation in the House of Representatives, including during the presentation of the 2024 budget, meaning their interests might not have been covered adequately. Then, the winner whose election was cancelled is also spending money, which ought not to be. Other contestants are also spending.”
He said there might be voter apathy as “it is not certain if INEC performed its role of educating voters that even there is a rerun.”
Nwoye expressed hope that the APC candidate would emerge victorious on the grounds that ‘the affected polling units are APC stronghold’.
Our correspondent reports that the candidate of APC in the election, Dr Oby Aji, had gone to Appeal Court seeking the nullification of the votes in the affected polling units for the omission of her results, a prayer which was ruled in her favour. It was gathered that the constituency has over 500 polling units.
Hon Dennis Agbo of the Labour Party had won the election with a margin of over 12, 000, with the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Simon Atigwe, coming second. The APC candidate came third with less than 2, 000 votes.
Agbo earlier expressed optimism of winning, claiming that the areas that were contested at the tribunal ‘are where APC scored zero votes’. He, however, blamed INEC for not recording the results accordingly.