The People’s Democratic Party, PDP, staged a mass protest at the Headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Abuja Nigeria’s capital.
The protest march is as a result of a fallout of the Saturday 25 February presidential election which INEC declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling APC as winner.
The protestors made up of top leadership of the PDP including the presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar all dressed in black, defied the blestering sun to march to the electoral umpire ‘s office with placards reading “Nigeria is Not for sale”, INEC must respect the will 9f the people, enough is enough.”
The party is also protesting the “intensive manipulation and fraud that attended this election” which it has also described as “unprecedented in the history of our nation”.
The National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee Mr. Festus Okoye recieved the protestors along with management staff who listened to their grievances
The party’s national chairman, Iyrochia Ayu who led the peaceful protest, presented to Mr. Okoye a copy of their protest letter for delivery to the INEC Chairman.
The letter partly reads: “Predictably, the conduct and outcome of the Presidential and National Assembly elections fell below acceptable standards. It has resonated the fears of all Nigerians in your integrity and that of your commission to conduct a free, fair, transparent and credible election. The confidence you deceitfully made us to repose in you and your commission has been battered and eroded away by the outcome of that election. The masses are angry and have not hidden their resentment and rejection of the purported declaration you made to that effect”.
Ayu said the PDP on behalf of aggrieved voters of the country will resist any attempt to scuttle the March 11 Governorship and state Houses of assembly election, and that they have resolved ” to reject and declare as unprecedented the outcome and announcement and exclamation of the Presidential results and to call on your commission to suspend the ongoing transmission of the polling units results to your servers which is in complete breach of the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022″ among others.
Responding on behalf of INEC Mr. Festus Okoye said ” I have recieved this protest letter on behalf of the Chairmen of the Independent National Electoral Commission. If there remedial issues we will deal with those remedial issues. But I want to assure you that this Commission is a listening Commission this Commission is a public trust and this Commission belongs to the Nigerian people. Our allegiance is to the people of the federal Republic of Nigeria. This Commission does not owe allegiance to any political party”.
The protest march had men, women, countless youths and persons living with disabilities, in truck, cars, wheelchairs and those walking.
The Presidential candidate of the party, Atiku Abubakar had on Thursday, stated that preliminary assessment has shown that the election is the worst conducted in the country since the return to democratic rule.
Atiku at a recent press briefing after the election stated that “ I can still not understand why the electoral umpire was in such a hurry to conclude collation and announcement of the result, given the number of complaints of irregularities of bypassing of the BVAS, failure of uploading to the IREV, and unprecedented cancellations and disenfranchisement of millions of voters in breach of the Electoral Act and the commission’s guidelines.
N.O
