Worried by the delay in declaring the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party the winner of the governorship election in Enugu State, the supporters of the PDP have staged a protest at the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
JOURNALIST101 reports that the candidate of the PDP, Barr. Peter Mbah is currently leading his closest challenger, Chijioke Edeoga of the Labour Party with 16747 votes.
According to the results collated from the 17 Local Government Areas in Enugu State, the PDP polled a total of 174,289 votes while Labour Party had 157,542 votes.
The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Dr Chukwuemeka Chukwu, however said that proceeding will commence again by 8:30am on Monday to allow the commission, attend to the complaints raised by both PDP and Labour Party.
But the supporters of the PDP are insisting that INEC isn’t a tribunal and as such, should declare Mbah winner and accusing the umpire of trying to scuttle the process.
A rights activist, Kennedy Iyere said the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu during the collation of the presidential election results, went ahead to return a winner and asked those dissatisfied to go to court.
Iyere wondered why INEC should use Enugu as a guinea pig to experiment what has never been done anywhere in the country, adding that the discrepancies in question here can’t be compared to what happened in the presidential election and despite the protest, Mahmood declared a winner.
He went further to reveal that some powerful persons in Enugu State like former minister, Bath Nnaji, former President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Nnia Nwodo are pushing INEC not to declare the result that its collation has been completed since Sunday night.
Other supporters of Mbah that spoke to journalists, accused INEC of bias and asked them to go ahead and declare their candidate winner since he met all the requirements of the law and has a strong lead of over 16,000 votes.
