The All Progressive Grand Alliance has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission to cancel the reversed results of the governorship poll in three Abia local government areas.
The results were earlier cancelled by the Returning Officer but later reversed.
The National Chairman of APGA, Chief Victor Umeh, who made the call at a press conference in Umuahia on Monday, said INEC should sustain the earlier decision of the returning officer and order a fresh election in the affected three LGAs.
The returning officer for the governorship poll, Professor Benjamin Ozumba, had midway into the collation of results on Sunday at the INEC headquarters, Umuahia, cancelled the results from Obingwa, Osisioma and Isialangwa-South LGAs, citing “incontrovertible evidence of malpractice.”
Umeh argued that the reversal of the cancellation was as a result of the storming of the collation centre by chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party led by its National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh and the Abia State Governor, Theodore Orji.
Umeh said, “The intrusion of PDP henchman to intimidate the returning officer to reverse the earlier valid action he had taken is unacceptable to APGA. We are opposed to the inclusion of these imported results.
“We demand a total repeat of elections in the three LGAs in addition to other polling units where elections did not hold.”
Umeh further argued that INEC should correct what he termed administrative error by ordering fresh elections in the affected LGAs “instead of referring us to the tribunal when a supplementary election has not been held, meaning that the process has not been completed.”
He also called on INEC to send people from outside the state to conduct the supplementary poll accusing the ad- hoc staff and INEC permanent staff who supervised the previous exercise of compromising.
It will be foolhardy for us to accept to go into the supplementary poll with the same crop of electoral officers that conducted this charade,” he said.
Adding his voice, the APGA governorship candidate, Dr. Alex Otti, thanked the people of the state for voting massively for him, insisting that he won the poll but “the thieves came in the night to steal the mandate but they were not too smart as they shot themselves in the leg.”
He accused PDP of massive rigging especially in areas they felt were their strongholds.
“It is unimaginable that while voter turnout was below 30 per cent in other areas of the state, Obingwa where the PDP candidate comes from recorded over 90 per cent. How can he poll over 82,000 in Obingwa while Abaribe scored 64,000 and Jonathan 16,000 on March 28 elections?
“Does it mean that voters voted for Abaribe and did not vote for Jonathan or the dead came two weeks after to vote for Ikpeazu?”
He, however, appealed to his supporters to remain calm and not resort to violence, expressing confidence that he would get justice in the end
