Members of the All Progressives Congress (APC)in Delta State earlier today staged a protest in Asaba, the state capital, over what they alleged to be massive falsification of last Saturday's presidential and National Assembly results.
The APC members gathered outside the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office in Asaba, but armed soldiers and police prevented them from gainingaccess into the premises of the electoral commission.
Benjamin Ogbalor, the director general of the APC governorship campaign organization, and O'tegaEmerhor, the APC’s candidate in the April 11, 2015 governorship election, led today’s protest. The APC leaders accused INEC’s returning officer in last weekend’s election of conniving with some members of the ruling party to inflate the PDP’s vote tallies and to manipulate the election results.
Addressing reporters during the protest, Mr. Ogbalor stated that unjustly allowed manual accreditations that paved the way for the PDP to embark on massive rigging in order to get bogus figures.
“On the election day, PDP rigged massively and they got bogus figures. Being a peace loving party,we did not do anything. We did not go into any form of violence. But we kept our result sheets from the various local governments right from the presidential and National Assembly results.
“You will recall that the presidential and National Assembly [elections] have the same accreditation, so the upper limit for accreditation for Delta State is already established by the cumulative results from the local governments and also the cumulative results from the National Assembly. So we were surprised to discover that the PDP has rewritten all the results since it dawned on them that our presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, is leading,” the APC official said.
He alleged that the polling figures from Delta “have been inflated and falsified to make up some of the deficits that have been recorded nationally,” describing the manipulation as “unfair andcriminal.”
He regretted that the returning officer “is a professor [who] is condoning this kind of criminality.” Continued Mr. Ogbalor, “The act is condemnable and that is why we all came down here to INEC office in Asaba to protest. We are protesting the already rewritten results by the returning officer in collaboration with some PDP stalwarts in Delta State. They have used the military might and other security agents to stop the APC from going into the INEC premises to express our dissatisfaction.”