By Omeiza Ajayi & Favour Ulebor, Abuja

The Presidential Campaign Council, PCC, of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has accused the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and Labour Party, LP, of shopping for court orders to halt the ongoing collation of presidential election results with a view to throwing the country into a wave of constitutional crisis.

“We have it on good authority that the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party have perfected plans to finally scuttle our democracy and throw the country into constitutional crises by surreptitiously obtaining ex parte court orders stopping the announcement of the presidential election results, which they fear have gone against them,” said APC PCC spokesman, Mr Festus Keyamo(SAN).

Keyamo, who is also the Minister of State, Labour and Employment, was reacting to the decision of the parties to walk out on the Chief Returning Officer and Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, while collation was underway at the National Collation Centre in Abuja.

According to Keyamo, the walk-out they staged today at the National Collation Centre is just a precursor to executing the plan.

He said: “Nigerians would recall that the June 12, 1993 debacle that brought Nigeria to its knees and caused our country international isolation was precipitated by a court injunction stopping the announcement of presidential election results.

“The court order was obtained by a certain Association for Better Nigeria headed then by one Chief Authur Nzeribe.

“This is exactly what Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr. Peter Obi want to foist on this nation again because of their inordinate ambitions. This is not surprising because both candidates where nowhere to be seen when ASIWAJU was fighting for the democracy we all enjoy today.

“However, we wish to draw the attention of Nigerians, the Judiciary and the world to the provisions of section 84 (15) of the Electoral Act, which prohibits the grant of injunctions to the stop the holding of elections (which includes the declaration of results).

“The section states: Nothing in this section shall empower the courts to stop the holding of primaries or general elections under this Act pending the determination of a suit’.

“This has prompted their instructions to their campaign organizations, especially their spokespersons to continue to issue statements, making false claims of ‘victory’ when there is no single scientific basis for such claims.

“For instance, as outlandish as some of their claims of manipulation are, they have not pointed at one single presidential election result in any single unit in the whole country where they scored a particular figure with a result sheet duly signed by their agent that was subsequently changed at a Collation Centre.

“All we hear are sound bites of their spokespersons, huffing and puffing about winning the election just to whip up public sentiments to prepare the ground to reject the results when they are eventually released by INEC.

“”For us our position is very simple and straight forward: we wish to allow the legal process of declaring presidential election results to take place peacefully and in an orderly fashion. Asiwaju is not desperate, but is very confident of victory.

“We therefore wish to advice anyone who wishes to aid and encourage these candidates along this infamous part to remember the June 12 debacle.

“They may also wish to learn a lesson or two from President Muhammadu Buhari who resorted to the court of law in 2003, 2007 and 2011 when same PDP ‘defeated’ him in those presidential elections in controversial circumstances.

“President Buhari, as a true statesman and democrat, never resorted to underhand tactics to declare himself President.”

Walk out

At least, four political parties staked a walk out after raising point of orders which were overruled by the INEC Chairman. The parties included the PDP, LP, the African Democratic Congress ADC, and Action Peoples Party APP.

Speaking outside the collation centre, the PDP agent, Senator Dino Melaye accused INEC of trying to rig the polls, saying at least seven parties were staging the walk out.

However, at the resumption of collation, the Peoples Redemption Party PRP, Allied Peoples Movement APM, Social Democratic SDP, Accord, Young Peoples Party YPP, National Rescue Movement NRM, African Action Congress AAC, Action Alliance AA, New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP, APC and Boot party agents said that they were not part of the protest and would want the collated results announcements to proceed and be concluded.

Addressing journalists outside the hall, Senator Melaye said; “All of us who have staged a walk out, all the political party that staged a walk out, our resolution is that the entire process be cancelled. That is our demand.

“Our demand is that, the system is compromised, INEC is compromised, so the entire process be stalled and cancelled.

“We party agents having observed that the National Chairman of INEC is determined to rig the election, by making sure that results are not uploaded, by vehemently making a presentation that makes it look as if we are all here to rubber-stamp the fraud that has been cooked between INEC and APC, we are saying that we are not here to rubber-stamp the electoral stamp that have been prepared by INEC and APC.

“We are Nigerians and we all know, that there is no where on the server that results have been uploaded, he is now saying we should wait for the process to be completed before he will review, knowing full well that once a declaration is done, there cannot be any review but court.

“So we are completely disassociating ourselves and that is why we staged a walk out. All the political parties here have staged a workout to express the unfortunate politicization and commercialization of our electoral process.

“We are about 9, 10, agents here staging a walk out and we are saying that INEC is compromised, APC has influenced INEC and we can see results are been changed.

“We have records of where elections did not take place and results have been prepared, we have records of where the BVAs where not used and results have been pronounced.

“What is difficult in the INEC chairman showing the uploaded results so that we can compare and interrogate that with the presentation that is made by the state returning officers but they cannot upload results, they cannot show us uploaded results because they know that what they are going to upload will be at variance with what they are presenting to Nigerians.

“So the electoral process has been rigged, INEC has rigged the 2023 elections, and we are completely disassociating ourselves from it and we know what to do next”, he said.

National Secretary of the Labour Party and also the agent of the LP, Umaru Ibrahim Farouk said the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS was not used in most places.

He said; “It is very very unfortunate, we have aired our observations to the national chairman of INEC, he has refused to listen to us, we made observations, he wants us to recieve and accept the doctored results that came from the collation center in various states.

“We do not agree with that and we have empirical evidence that our agents have observed to us and they have informed us reliably that the BVAS machine have not been used.

“Where they are used, they are been compromised and the results of the BVAS machine have not been uploaded to INEC portal and we have observed on Saturday around the hour of 2pm, the INEC portal had gone down.

” The server has gone down, INEC has reportedly claimed and they have also acknowledged and pleaded with Nigerians that they are having a glitch in their server and now that server will still monitor it at that, the INEC chairman wants us to accept what they are presenting here and so, we do not accept.”

On his part, Deputy National Secretary African Democratic Congress, ADC, who is also his party’s agent, Nkem Okandu said the process being used was manual collation.

“What we are asking is just a simple thing and it is not outside the Electoral Law. When the electoral law was made, we were all happy that there will be use of technology but as at today, you can see that what we are using now is manual collation and nobody will be happy to see that as at now we are still using pen and paper to transmit results.

“But the electoral act says, the transmission must be done from the polling unit direct to the INEC server. You are not supposed to be guessing who is the president by now, we all should have seen on the INEC platform the results as it should be,” he said.

Agent of the APP, Chinemelu Uba, on his part said; “What we have done or what we have been trying to do since morning is to allow INEC to redeem themselves.

“The word on the street is that this process is not transparent and what we have tried to do is to make INEC regain confidence from the people that this process is transparent.

“What is hard to do, that you conducted this election and you transmitted results electronically, what is hard in showing the whole world that you did? That is all we are asking and the chairman has refused to address that. We cannot be parties to illegality. That is why we have staged a walk out and it shall remain so”.

Another PDP agent and former Imo state Governor, Emeka Ihedioha queried why BVAS was used in off-season elections and now allegedly discarded in the presidential election.

He said; “INEC as an institution promised Nigerians severally that electronic media has come to stay. It was used in Ondo state, it was used in Osun and Edo state and Nigerians applauded it, and it is obvious that on Saturday there were challenges, INEC admitted in someway and all we expected INEC to do was to say, gentlemen, we were not able to do that.

“They have not been able to accept responsibility for where we are and we are saying this has questioned the integrity of the process.

“As we speak now, they are still writing results in a lot of places. This is something that you all know. In a number of states, they are still writing results, there were places where elections did not take place in my native Imo state but they have manufactured results and INEC knew that all the political parties said don’t have elections here because of some situations, and no elections took place”.

‘We can’t review results’

Responding, INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu said results of the election can only be reviewed after completion of the process.

He said; “From what transpired at the polling units and what was uploaded or ought to have been uploaded to the IReV portal, I am satisfied that the figures on this spreadsheet emanated from the process that transpired at the polling units.

“The polling units are the only places where citizens vote. Whatever you do thereafter, is just collation of results. And we have provided the votes scored by each political party.

“However, if any political party believes that the figures they have from the hard copies of the results, given by their polling agents at the level of collation, that if figures are inconsistent with what has been provided on the spreadsheet that we projected yesterday, I will ask that political party to forward the information to the commission, so that we can speak on the basis of facts.

“I like the suggestion that the commission has power under the Electoral Act to review results, but that power is contingent upon one procedure – the process has to be concluded first before you can then talk about power to review and to assure political parties that any evidence that you have of any alleged wrongdoing at any level of the process, whether it is at the polling unit or collation level, please forward this information and I promise you as soon as the process is concluded, we will then do the review, as provided by law.

“On this note. I beg you, for us to proceed with the process”, he said.