Why Labour Party Will Not Negotiate With PDP In Enugu State – Barr Ugwu

Barr Emeka Ugwu, a Labour Party stalwart in Enugu State, Monday, said his party would challenge the outcome of the governorship election in the state because it was marred by vote buying, over voting especially in Nkanu East, ballot box snatching and voter inducement.

Ugwu, who is also the lawyer to the deputy governorship candidate of LP in the state, said LP’s governorship candidate in the state, Barr Chijioke Edeoga, would not negotiate with the state governor-elect, PDPS’s Mr Peter Mba, because the outcome was not the wishes of the masses.

He told THE WHISTLER that, “You can’t put something on nothing and expect it to stand. The foundation of this election is what we are contesting. The electoral process is bad. There is truce already because the Labour Party faithful have remained calm even in the midst of the daylight robbery that happened in Enugu State. There is no violence, but the electoral process has to be challenged because we believe the election was characterised by irregularities, and that needs to be determined by the court.”

He commended the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, but blamed the officials entrusted with the system for the alleged flawed polls. He said, “The introduction of the BVAS machines is one of the smartest things that INEC did. There are different functions of BVAS. One of them is to transmit or transfer the results. That is not the problem of the machine itself. The problem is about the people that handled it. We believe that some of the INEC officials lacked sincerity of purpose. It could be deliberate or they were intimidated to feed false information to the BVAS.”

He said LP had taken over Enugu State considering its successes during the polls. “Based on the results, LP is Enugu State and Enugu State is LP. LP won the state’s seven out of eight House of Reps seats, two out of the three senators, and fourteen out of twenty-four House of Assembly seats. This is an indication that PDP’s foundation in the state has been destroyed. But the big fish, which is the governorship, is the one stolen from us. We will reclaim our mandate. When that happens, the dismantling of the PDP would have been concluded.”

He tasked the judiciary to live above board in deciding cases in the aftermath of poll. He said, “We have confidence that the panel of judges to handle election matters in the state will be men of integrity. We believe that they will withstand the pressures which the opposition will mount on them. But like we say in law, justice is not only done but must be seen to have been done. We hope that they will stand with the people of Enugu State, and restore our mandate that was stolen by the PDP.”

Our correspondent reports that INEC declared Mba winner with 3000 vote margin over LP’s Chijioke Edeoga.