The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP) and the African Democratic Party (ADP) held a joint Press Conference on Tuesday in Abuja where they alleged that the February 2023 presidential election was marred with violence, rigging and intimidation.
The parties 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.”
The LP National Chairman, Julius Abure, who delivered the position of the three opposition parties said, “We therefore call on Yakubu to step aside from his role.”
The aggrieved parties further stated that they have a responsibility to the millions of Nigerians who put their faith in them and their presidential candidates to defend our country from the forces that seek to tear it apart.
They therefore call on President Muhammadu Buhari to stand by his promise to Nigerians to leave a legacy of free, fair, transparent and credible elections to the country.
Sources disclosed that INEC was advised by its ICT experts to withhold the upload of the presidential and National Assembly elections results into its servers pending final results declaration.
The sources explained that INEC ICT received intelligence that the opposition had hired internet hackers to laugh cyber attacks on INEC’s servers to compromise the election over fears of incumbency factor that might work against the opposition parties.
The sources explained that this was why INEC refused to upload the results to its servers to preserve the integrity of the election.
The sources added: “INEC’s position did not go down with PDP and Labour Party. That is why they were calling on INEC, protesting to upload the results on their servers, to enable them hack into the it in order to compromise the entire exercise, but unfortunately for PDP and Labour Party, INEC had already received intelligence on their plan.
