The Labour Party has pledged to organize its supporters to seize the commission’s offices nationwide on Monday if the Independent National Electoral Commission disobeys the court ruling allowing its lawyers to examine the voting materials used in the February 25 presidential election.
Yunusa Tanko, the chief spokesperson for the Obi-Datti presidential campaign council, made the warning in a statement on Saturday.
The results of the presidential election, in which Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and the flag bearer of the Liberation Party with 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively, have been the subject of ongoing controversy.
Dissatisfied by the result, both Obi and Atiku had approached the election tribunal to seek permission to inspect the electoral materials used during the poll.
Three days prior to the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections, INEC obtained a court injunction requiring them to alter the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System equipment.
Tanko, however, thought that the commission was using a “delay” strategy to thwart the LP’s attempts to retrieve his mandate by convincing Nigerians that the election was fixed.
The activist further charged INEC of breaching a court order for it to give Obi and the party access to certified true copies of the documents used to conduct the election.
He said, “It will be recalled that the aforesaid order of the presidential election petition tribunal was duly served on INEC on March 3, 2023, despite the fact that they were present and represented at the tribunal when the Order was made.
“The action of INEC under reference also constitutes, for all intent and purposes, an act of judicial insubordination and willful refusal to comply with the order of court. As we speak INEC has chosen to obey the court order given to it to reconfigure the BIVAS machine, which they doing right now and ignoring the order granted to us to inspect electoral materials.
The popularity of Obi, according to the governor of Abia State, Okezie Ikpeazu, will not in any way benefit Alex Otti’s bid for the LP nomination for governor of the state.
In a statement sent by his media office, the governor stated, “In Abia, our people know that Obi is not Otti. They are aware that they each stand for distinct things collectively. There are records of them. Abia is not one of those areas where it is difficult to tell what is good from what is poor. Before they mature, it is very simple to tell this “chaff from the wheat” because the distinctions between them are so stark.