The Enugu State Chapter of the Labour Party has rejected the results of Saturday's governorship election that produced the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Mbah as the winner.
SaharaReporters had reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission declared Mbah of the PDP the winner of the poll on Wednesday night after it accepted that there was over-voting in the Nkanu East local government area of the state.
Labour Party had through its agent, Dr Eugene Edeoga, on Sunday night raised objections on the results of Nkanu East, stating that the election in the council didn't meet the threshold of election requirements.
He alleged that there was over-voting, manipulation of election results and non-use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines in the conduct of the election.
He, therefore, called for the cancellation of the election.
On Monday, INEC following the protests and receipt of petitions suspended the collation and declaration of the results of the governorship election.
On Wednesday, the electoral body said it had reviewed the results and found out that there was manipulation and over-voting in Nkanu East local government area.
However, after allocating votes to parties according to what it said were genuine votes from the local government area, the returning officer declared Peter Mbah of PDP the winner of the poll.
But reacting to the results of the election as declared by INEC, the LP said it would not accept them, adding that the elections were marred by widespread rigging, intimidation of voters, and doctoring, mutilation and manipulation of the results, particularly the results of Nkanu East.
LP in a statement issued on Thursday by its State Publicity Secretary, Onuora Odo, said, "It's on record that the process of accreditation and use of BVAS was not followed in some of the pooling booths, especially Nkanu East."
He further said, "It's also on record that in the course of the collation of results, the results of Nkanu East showed monumental disparities between the number of registered voters and the total number of votes, but the obviously compromised INEC decided to disregard the provisions of the Electoral Act and went ahead to declare the conspicuously padded results despite complaints from the opposition parties.
"This was the reason why they deliberately delayed the announcement of the result to pave way for further manipulations.
"The position of the party, therefore, is that the result as declared by INEC on the 22nd of March, 2023, four days after the elections were concluded, was heavily doctored and does not reflect the wishes of Ndi Enugu State."
"In view of the foregoing developments, we are, by this media release, registering our dissatisfaction over the electoral irregularities and malfeasances activated and actuated by heavy financial inducements.
"Let it be known that our great party is poised to deepen the root of democracy in Nigeria and cannot fold our arms and allow this level of electoral heist to go unchallenged.
"In due course, the position of the party will be made known as we have started assembling our facts together to do the needful. Surely, this is a rape of democracy," he added.