From Paul Osuyi, Asaba
Candidates of the Labour Party (LP) for the governorship and National Assembly elections in Delta State have frowned at the outcome of last Saturday’s election across the state.
Although the party had a landslide victory in the presidential election, it won two out of 13 seats for the National Assembly poll.
Speaking in Asaba, LP governorship candidate in the state, Mr Kennedy Pela, advised the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to exhibit impunity on March 11, 2023, Governorship and House of Assembly elections in Delta.
Pela said last Saturday’s national polls were conducted against the repeated assurances by INEC that the elections would be free, fair and credible.
According to him, the elections were largely compromised, leading to irregularities including overvoting, intimidation of voters, and manipulation of results, among others.
He chided INEC for flouting the provision of the Electoral Act on electronic transmission of results from the polling units to the commission’s portal, noting that the failure of INEC to abide by the law by manually transmitting the results was a grand design to conspire with the enemies of democracy to rig the election in favour of some political parties that had held the country captive for over two decades.
The LP governorship candidate maintained that the outcome of the February 25 elections in some council areas of the state was unacceptable to the party, having been conducted in contravention of the extant law of the land and should not stand.
Although Mr Pela admitted that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) helped to give credibility to the electoral process, he added that the exercise could not be said to have passed the litmus test as the results announced did not reflect what transpired in the field.
He thanked Deltans for making a statement with their votes, pointing out that the landslide victory of LP in Delta showed that Nigerians wanted a break from the business-as-usual style of politics which placed so much power in the hands of political leaders, declaring that the outcome of the presidential election truly affirmed that power belonged to the people.
In their contributions, the Delta north senatorial candidate of the party, Ken Kanma and the Ndokwa/Ukwuani Federal Constituency House of Representatives candidate, Dr Okwuolise, alleged that the National Assembly election in their areas was marred with irregularities and the results not acceptable to them.