The Enugu State governorship candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Ayogu Eze, has protested the result of the state’s governorship election, describing it as phantom.
In a statement Monday by the Director of his campaign organisation, Mr Okey Ezirigwe, the APC candidate said the result, as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), was oven baked.
INEC had declared incumbent Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as winner of the election.
Eze complained that his name and that of his running mate were omitted on INEC’s website before and during the election, thereby sending the wrong signal that his party, APC, was not in the race.
The statement said, “We have seen some oven-baked figures churned out by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in Enugu as the result of the March 9, 2019 governorship election.
“These fabricated figures fly in the face of the very low turnout of voters in the entire state, resulting from the mistreatment of our candidate by INEC.
“It would be recalled that a few days before the election INEC published the final list of governorship candidates for the Saturday, March 9, 2019 governorship and state House of Assembly elections in Enugu State on its website, without the names of the APC governorship and deputy governorship candidates for Enugu State, a situation the electoral body strangely explained resulted from a court order.
“On March 7, 2019, the Court of Appeal cleared whatever legal obstruction the INEC invoked, declaring Sen. Ayogu Eze, in a unanimous decision, the validly nominated governorship candidate of APC, Enugu state.
“The Appeal Court judgment compelling INEC to immediately restore our candidate on the candidates list, was served on INEC the same day which it acknowledged but refused to effect, up to the moment polls closed on Saturday, in clear violation and contempt of the court order, leading to unlawful exclusion of our validly nominated candidates.
“This development occasioned massive voter apathy leading to the lowest voter turnout ever recorded in Enugu State. We make bold to state that it’ll be a miracle if as many as 100,000 persons participated in the Saturday election in the State, if the card reader is queried.
“The absence of voters gave the PDP and those collaborating with it the ample opportunity to manufacture figures, which they have now put out as election results.
“Our supporters observed that while the card reader was supposed to have been programmed to stop functioning at 2pm, many polling centers remained open, up to as late as 5pm with massive thumb-printing going on, using multiple fingers and objects to mark the ballot papers.
“We are therefore calling on the people of Enugu State, all institutions and people of Nigeria not to only reject these forged figures described as governorship election results from an election that never took place in Enugu State, but to denounce the said election as a farce.
“The stark evidence of a highly depressed voter turnout that indicates about 65% drop on the general turnout during the March 2, 2019 presidential and National Assembly elections challenges the legitimacy of the electoral process and undermines the freakish and offbeat victory claimed by the PDP.”
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