Why we rejected Ikpeazu’s victory as Abia governor-elect, by Ogah, Otti

Abia State governorship candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in last Saturday’s election, Dr. Uche Ogah and Dr, Alex Otti, have jointly rejected the result and declaration of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner.

At a joint press conference in Umuahia yesterday, they alleged that “the results collated in the various local councils were not only fraudulent and did not represent the true reflection of the outcome of the elections but also not consistent with card reader details.”

According to them, the results were highly tampered with to favour the PDP, adding that even where some people in the opposition warned, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) allegedly connived with security agencies to change the results in favour of PDP.

Ogah and Otti also expressed surprise that INEC appointed the Returning Officer and Vice Chancellor, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Professor Benjamin Ozumba, and recalled that “it was the same Prof. Benjamin that created the problems we had in 2015 when he reversed himself by accepting results he had earlier cancelled when he came under pressure and influence of PDP in the state and at federal levels.

They stated that in the interest of fairness, they “expected INEC not to have appointed Ozumba as Returning Officer for the 2019 election.”

Also, they said they expected INEC to have implemented its own regulation and queried every card reader as it had stated before accepting the figures.

They, therefore, demanded total cancellation of the poll in the entire state as announced by INEC having in totality rejected the results of the 2019 governorship election as announced.