Labour Party Petitions INEC Over Non Use Of BVAS In Nkanu East In Enugu State

Labour Party (LP), has petitioned INEC over non usage of BVAS in the just concluded governorship election in Enugu State.

Petition Against The Non-usage Of BVAS In The Conduct Of The Gubernatorial Election Held On 18th March, 2023 In Nkanu East Local Government

The just concluded Enugu State Governorship election is fraught with serial irregularities and fundamental flaws in the conduct of the Governorship election held on 18th March, 2023 particularly with respect to Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State. We humbly wish to bring these irregularities to the attention of the Returning Officer for appropriate action as provided in the Electoral Act of 2022.

The Electoral Act and guidelines made pursuant thereto provides that the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) is to be used for the conduct of the Gubernatorial and State Houses Election nation-wide. This is a mandatorily requirement and failure to comply with these requirements renders any result of such election invalid.

The Commission through several public service announcements reiterated the centrality of the use of BVAS in the accreditation of voters through their permanent voters cards and in the transmission of the results directly from the polling units to the INEC portal

The provisions of the Act are very clear and the consequence of such violations is the Cancellation of the result

We note with dismay that this mandatory requirement of the Act was flagrantly disregarded by the officials of the Commission charged with the responsibility of conducting the gubernatorial election in Nkanu East. As a result of these gross violations of the provisions of the Act, the results collated from Nkanu East Local Government, are completely at variance with the provisions of the Electoral Acts and Guidelines

For example in several polling units across several Wards in Nkanu East Local Government, the results collated by the Local Government Collation Officer are at variance with the results uploaded to the INEC IREV portal.

As contained in the IREV, total votes purportedly cast in all the 14 Wards in Nkanu East Local Government was 20, 896 but the total result submitted is 32, 105 (PDP -30,350 + LP-1,855). The unexplained discrepancies, are as a result of non-usage of BVAS as mandatorily required by the Electoral Act and the guidelines of the electoral body, which led to the fraudulent allocation of votes to PDP by the officials appointed by INEC to conduct the election. No wonder the discrepancies between the votes they hurriedly uploaded to the IREV and the votes they presented for collation. See attached and marked Exhibit ‘A’ the collation of the results from Nkanu East LGA as uploaded on INEC’s portal.

In several other polling units across the Wards, the results collated clearly show that the votes allocated to the candidates are more than the total number of PVCs collected as a result of non-usage of the BVAS. Attached and marked Exhibit ‘B’is a list of some of the polling units affected

It is evidently clear that the BVAS as required by the Electoral Act were not used for the voters accreditation. By virtue of the Electoral Act 2022 Sec. 47 (3), the results from the entire Nkanu East should be cancelled.

We therefore urge the Returning Officer to cancel the results of Nkanu East Local Government Gubernatorial election which was conducted without the usage of BVAS as mandatorily required by the Act.

COMPUTATIONAL ERROR IN ENUGU EAST RESULT:

Finally, Please note also that there is a computation error in the collated results for Enugu East Local Government. Collated results from the Wards were not properly added up leading to a loss of over 3,000 votes for the Labour Party. We request the Returning Officer to kindly re-compute the results before him and amend accordingly

колон

Hon. Chijioke Edeoga LP Gubernatorial Candidate

CC:

The Re

sident Electoral Commissioner INEC