Two agents of the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, stormed out of the National Collation Centre for the presidential election results at the International Conference Centre in Abuja on Monday.
A member of the 8th National Assembly from Kogi West Senatorial District, Dino Melaye; and a former governor of Imo State, Emeka Ihedioha; an agent of the Labour Party, amongst others staged a walkout on the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu over dissatisfaction on the process of the collation of results from state collation officers for the presidential election (SCOPs).
The drama ensued around 4:30pm at the resumed collation exercise of the February 25 presidential election results for the second day.
Melaye, Ihedioha as well as the agents of the Labour Party and other parties had complained that the results presented by INEC SCOPs weren’t uploaded on the commission’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV), as repeatedly promised by the electoral umpire before the February 25 presidential poll.
Melaye argued strongly that without the upload of results electronically on IReV, this year’s election is not in any way different from the manual transmission of results done in 2015.
Melaye and others fiercely insisted that the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu must not accept the results of Ekiti, alleging that there were incidents of over voting and electoral irregularities.
But the INEC chairman maintained that there was no over voting in Ekiti and that the results presented by the SCOPs stand.
In reaction, Melaye, Ihedioha and about others stormed out of the national collation centre.
Before the break, Mahmood had cautioned Melaye not to be “disruptive” of the collation process at the insistence of the PDP chieftain that the results announced by the SCOPs should first have been uploaded on IReV for transparency and accountability.
The collation of results in Abuja has since continued in their absence.
Many party leaders have bitterly complained that INEC officials at the polling units were unable to upload election results to the IReV. The IReV and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) are new technologies introduced by the electoral body for the accreditation and electronic transmission of votes for this year’s polls.
Elections for the office of the President, 360 House of Representatives and 109 Senatorial seats were held in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory on Saturday and Nigerians expect the declaration of results by the electoral umpire.
The agent of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dino Melaye and former governor of Imo State, Emeka Ihedioha had challenged the electoral body to attend to their demand.
However, hours after resuming collation and listening to the opinions of party agents, INEC ignored their demands and continued with the collation.
The development saw agents of the PDP, Labour Party (LP) and several others pull out of the presidential collation.
The agents of the political parties threatened to act on their demands, following the decision of INEC to continue with collation.