DAILY POST
Mixed reactions have continued to trail the manual collation of votes for the presidential election, an action some say is in contravention of the provisions of the 2022 electoral act.
Recall that in the run-up to the presidential election, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, had assured Nigerians that election results would be uploaded realtime using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, at the various polling units across the country.
Similarly, the INEC National Commissioner for voter education, Festus Okoye, made a similar pledge while featuring on different public and media platforms.
However, following the failure of the INEC to deploy the BVAS for the presidential election, former president Olusegun Obasanjo tackled the electoral body alleging that its officials were compromised, and that results were doctored.
Obasanjo spoke on Monday while the presidential and National Assembly election results were still being collated.
He asked Buhari to order the cancellation of altered results and ensure that the commission embarks on fresh polls on Saturday, March 4, 2023.
According to Obasanjo, the commission spent a lot of money introducing the BVAS and the Server to transmit results from polling units immediately.
“It is no secret that INEC officials, at operational level, have been allegedly compromised to make what should have worked not to work and to revert to manual transmission of results which is manipulated and the results doctored,” Obasanjo said.
But in a swift response to Obasanjo’s call to cancel some of the polls, the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate (APC), Bola Tinubu, called on Buhari not to allow Obasanjo lure him into staining his democratic credentials.
Tinubu, in a statement by Special Adviser, Media, Communications and Public Affairs, APC Presidential Campaign Council (APC PCC), Dele Alake, urged Nigerians to reject Obasanjo’s dubious and hypocritical advice and stay strictly and firmly on the path of constitutionalism and democratic due process.
While further noting that the results that were brought outside BVAS and Server appear not to be a true reflection of the will of Nigerians, the former President appealed to the Chairman of INEC to save Nigeria from the looming danger and disaster waiting to happen by cancelling the election.
Also, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP) and African Democratic Congress (ADC) demanded a fresh election, saying the February 25 presidential election had been “irretrievably compromised”.
The PDP National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, and their LP and ADC counterparts, Julius Abure and Ralph Nwosu, made this known at a joint press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.
