The collation agent of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Dino Melaye, has demanded an explanation from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on why results of Saturday’s presidential elections were not uploaded to the commission’s results viewing portal immediately after voting.
Melaye, who addressed journalists at the International Conference Centre, venue of the National Collation Centre in Abuja, said contrary to INEC’s promise that results would be uploaded from the polling units, a lot of results were not uploaded to the server directly from the polling units.
He said the commission has fallen short of the expectation of the party agents, asking INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakuku, to tell Nigerians why.
He said that INEC has failed and that if care was not taken, party agents might just be endorse the fraud that the Commission has cooked up for the parties to swallow despite the assurance that they would upload results timeously.
”A few minutes ago, we raised the issue of the fact that in accordance with the provision of the Electoral Act, section 60 and section 40 of the Electoral Act 2022 as amended, that there’ll be the transmission of results from the polling units. And then, the INEC chairman has repeatedly told Nigerians that there will be the transmission of a lot of results from polling units directly to the server,” Melaye said.
“We find out that this has not been done. INEC failed in this regard. And when this issue was raised today, supported by other party agents, the national chairman of INEC evaded vehemently because what section 47 emphasizes is that wherever the card reader or the BVAS failed, if they cannot get a replacement, election should be cancelled in that area.
”And we have seen from the presentation of the results from yesterday that some places were cancelled as a result of bypassing BVAS. So the only way to detect that BVAS has been bypassed is for us to see the uploaded results.
”And we insisted that the chairman should show us here and now the uploaded results state by state just like the way they are displaying the collected results they are presenting and that is the only way to test the veracity and authenticity of these results.
”If not, we are only here to endorse the fraud that has been done from the units to the wards and to the states. We are not here to rubber-stamp infractions. We’re not here to rubber-stamp the abnormalities that have been done. We are here to check them but the national chairman of INEC is not giving us the opportunity to question what they are doing.
”He is saying that all has been done, meaning we are here to rubber-stamp and we are going to prove that we’re not here to rubber-stamp. We have no other country to call our home but this country, we are going to do everything humanly possible to make sure that the right thing must be done.
”We have just met now with other political parties and we are going to make a presentation by the time we resume and if they insist that they are not going to respond to us, then you will see the action we will take.
”We will not allow it. We have suffered pain in this country, we suffered poverty, hunger, and kidnapping, killings, and we will not allow a continuation of failure. We must make sure that the right thing is done.
“Nigerians are watching, the world is watching, even the dead are watching to see what INEC will do, but the battle to make sure that only authentic results will be announced here today Is a battle of no retreat, no surrender,” he noted.
