Labour Party Announces Loss Of Confidence On INEC, Rejects Presidential Election Results

The Labour Party, one of Nigeria’s main opposition parties in the 2023 elections, has rejected the ongoing collation and announcement of the presidential election results in Abuja.

The party Monday said it was doing so because INEC failed to publish all the results from polling units on its iREV server.

The opposition party thus questioned the integrity of the collation and announcement exercise at the national collation centre in Abuja.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had raised similar questions as the collation of the presidential election results resumed at the National Collation Centre in Abuja on Monday.

The Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, is one of the four presidential candidates that have won at least one state in the elections.

On Sunday, INEC admitted the slow uploading of polling unit results on its result viewing portal (IRev). The commission said the problem is due to technical hitches.

“It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations,” INEC said in a statement. It, however, assures Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems and that the IReV remains well-secured.

Some political parties including the PDP have protested the delay in the uploading of the presidential election results on the election results Viewing portal (IRev), insisting that collation will not continue until that is done.

They also claimed that there are cases of over-voting in the results of Ekiti and Kwara states as presented by their collation officers and Resident Electoral Commissioners.

Other parties like NRM and APC asked INEC to ignore this call.

But the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, insisted that the cases of over-voting should have been flagged at either their polling units during counting, the registration areas, during local government collation or at the state collation centres. The parties have their representatives in all three levels, he said.

He said while the commission has the power to review the electoral process, “it is contingent” after the initial “process is concluded.”

(Premium Times)