Despite win Sen Abaribe says election flawed, INEC manipulated votes

The former Minority Leader of the Senate, Enyinnaya Abaribe, has alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) manipulated election results in last Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections.

The INEC had come under heavy criticism over its alleged abysmal conduct of the elections.

Accusations of malfunctioning of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), failure to upload results on the INEC’s portal from the polling units, manipulation of result figures, late arrival of officials and election materials, among other irregularities, had been stated by several critics and political parties who lost election in different electoral offices.

Abaribe, who was re-elected for a sixth tenure in the Senate to represent Abia South Senatorial District on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), spoke to journalists on Thursday, in Abuja about his assessment of the election.

He noted that full electronic transmission of election results would help engender a credible conduct of elections in the country.

The Senator stated that it was shameful that elections in the country were still conducted manually.

Recall that the National Assembly had approved the electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Act, 2022.

READ ALSO:Sen Abaribe withdraws from Abia PDP guber primary, says it’s a charade

Abaribe secured 49,693 votes to defeat the governor of Abia State, Okezie Ikpeazu, who polled 28,422 votes to come a distant third in the National Assembly election.

Abaribe said: “I am one of those that believed that the process of the elections was flawed.

“But I call for calm and peace and people should resort to the legal means to redress the error.

“It is such a bloody shame that INEC will manipulate the scores of candidates.

“It happens because the result sheets are in the hands of INEC officials. We should introduce full electronic voting that is tamper-proof.

“It is possible. We are in the electronic age. It is time we got adapted to modern technology. We cannot continue to play with our existence.

“Throughout its planning stages, INEC kept assuring us that it was prepared to conduct credible elections so we thought that everything would work smoothly.”

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