Abia South: LP Rejects Result Declaring Abaribe Winner, Faults RO

The Labour Party’s (LP), Senatorial candidate for Abia South, Mr Chinedu Onyeizu on Wednesday rejected the declaration of Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe as the winner of Saturday’s Senatorial election in Abia State by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Onyeizu described it as shocking how Prof. Georgina Ugwuanyi, the Returning Officer who earlier declared the election inconclusive because she said that about 108 units had irregularities will go ahead on Tuesday to announce Abaribe as the winner without telling the world how she sorted out those irregularities.

He equally said that despite the irregularities INEC talked about in those polling units, the figures given to Abaribe were wrong.

Onyeizu, however, said that he was leading Abaribe with 10,000 votes.

He said it is shocking and magical and remains an electoral mystery how INEC reduced his scores to 43,903 votes and magnified Abaribe’s who should be trailing him to 49,693 votes.

Speaking to newsmen, Onyeizu said that he rejects the results and will contest it to the end, stressing that his opposition has shown that he is afraid of the rerun seeing fully well that he, Onyeizu is on the ground and that the people have chosen LP in all their votes.

“There were issues with a lot of the polling units in Aba North, Aba South and Obingwa local government areas based on the number of registered voters and the number of actual votes cast.

“So it was obvious that the election was inconclusive and the Returning Officer made a statement two days ago concerning that stating that the election results were inconclusive as a result of the irregularities experienced.

“We were very optimistic that INEC should make public the new date for the rescheduled elections. We were expecting a fair rescheduled election that will come up anytime soon.

But I’m shocked to hear that they returned in the afternoon to announce a winner after declaring the election inconclusive in the morning of Tuesday. This is unacceptable.

“I have already urged everyone in Abia South to troop out to vote LP again to prove to our opponent that we’re on the ground and that we were victorious at the just concluded election said to be inconclusive.

“We’re looking at a rescheduled election that should take place in over 70 polling units in Aba South which has the largest number of registered voters in the entire Abia State.

“We’re talking about over 500,000 registered voters. They claimed he was leading me with 5000 which is not true. They miscalculated. I was leading with 10,000 votes.

“Let’s assume he was even leading with what they claimed, who said it cannot be upturned from those polling units considering the number of registered voters there. So, I don’t accept this result because it’s not a true reflection of the votes cast.