The leadership of the Labour Party has raised the alarm over reports of alleged electoral malpractices in Rivers State in Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections and demanded an outright cancellation of the elections in the state.
Vanguard reports that the National chairman of the party, Barrister Julious Abure made the demand in Abuja, on Sunday.
He explained that the party’s demand was predicated on revelations emanating from Rivers state after Saturday’s presidential and national assembly elections in the state.
According to him, evidence abounds that thugs believed to be agents of the state government invaded various polling units and collation centres, took away election materials including the results sheets, manipulated the BVAS machines and uploaded fake results in to the Central portal.
He said, “We took particular note of incidences in places like Obio/Akpor, Khana, Eleme, Obigbo, Rumukoro and several other areas where Labour Party was clearly leading in virtually all the polling units with very wide margins.
“Governor Nyesom Wike, faced with stark reality of defeat even in the polling units in his compound in Worji, where LP scored 323 votes against APC and PDP’s 5 and 2 votes respectively, he used the soldiers and police to intimidate, harassed and snatched ballot papers.
“Nigerians went into this election based on the assurances by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC that the deployment of BVAS was a perfect antidote to electoral malpractices in Nigeria, but what transpired across Nigeria, if allowed to stand is purely a betrayal of trust by millions of Nigerians on INEC.
“INEC’s staff were intimidated by these thugs in connivance with the military personnels and police officers who were deployed to protect them, into doing their bidding and were forced to manipulate the BVAS, being afraid of the consequences of their refusal.
“Some of these manipulations happened way into late in the night. We demand that INEC investigate these atrocities against Nigerian voters by the political class.
“We are therefore asking that INEC should rise to the occasion and cancel all the unverified and manipulated results arising from the presidential and national assembly elections in parts of Rivers state particularly in places like Obio/Akpor, Khana, Eleme, Obigbo and Rumukoro amongst others.”