In a reminiscent of the infamous action of former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe, who disrupted the collation of results in 2015 and accused the then chairman of INEC, Prof Attahiru Jega, of bias and compromise, agents of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Dino Melaye and Hon Emeka Ihedioha, on Monday, staged a walked out from the National Collation Centre for the presidential election results at the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja.
Melaye, a former member of the 8th National Assembly from Kogi West Senatorial District and a former Imo State Governor Emeka Ihedioha and an agent of the Labour Party amongst others, staged a walkout on the Chairman of INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, over dissatisfaction on the process of the collation of results from state collation officers for the presidential election (SCOPs).
The drama ensued at about 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 others 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 also argued 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 his other allies further stated that the INEC Chairman must not accept the results from Ekiti, alleging that there were incidents of over voting and electoral irregularities.
They contended that the collation of results at the centre is at variance with provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 and that they do not believe in the results presented by the SCOPs.
But the INEC chairman called the bluff of Melaye and insisted that there was no over voting in Ekiti, saying that the results presented by the SCOPs stand. Yakubu also said the process must continue as scheduled.
Reacting, Melaye, Ihedioha and other PDP and LP agendas walked out of the national collation centre
TheIdeal News recalls Orubebe had on March 31, 2015 disrupted the collation of results exercise in Abuja and accused Jega of bias and compromise.
Orubebe further moved closer to Jega, seized the microphone and for several minutes insisted that Jega must leave the results collation centre at the ICC.
The former Niger Delta Minister said Jega’s conduct had shown that he was clearly biased against the ruling PDP.He said also complained that Jega acted promptly on complaints from the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) but refused to accept a petition from the PDP regarding the results declared so far.
Orubebe also accused the former INEC chairman of being “tribalistic and partial.”He claimed while Jega promptly commissioned a fact-finding team on reports of malpractices from Rivers State, he did not act on the PDP’s complaints over results from Kano, Katsina, Kaduna and Gombe states.
Orubebe was unyielding while Jega and other INEC officials appealed to him to allow the collation go on.But Orubebe said the collation would not continue except Jega leave the venue for his office to “address PDP complaints”.
Jega later explained that he refused to accept petitions from the PDP because he could not do so while collating results.
The former INEC chairman said he was approached by a senior official of the PDP, Bello Fadile, but that he advised Fadile to deliver the party’s complaints at the INEC office, through the secretary.
