‘We no longer trust INEC’, LP reacts after umpire said results will be saved in server

The Labour Party has reiterated its disappointment in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the conduct of the February 25 presidential election.

The party while reacting to the postponement of the governorship election by one week, says it does not trust the electoral umpire to conduct free, fair and credible polls.

The National Chairman of the party, Comrade Julius Abure, said this in an interview in Abuja, on Thursday and posted on the party’s YouTube channel.

He lamented that even though INEC had assured that results from the presidential election would be uploaded on its server, the party had doubts over the assurance.

He said he had expressed implicit confidence in INEC before the presidential election, but the commission’s conduct of the election as well as subsequent actions has eroded his confidence in it.

Abure said: “Our major concern is that aspect (of the Appeal Court ruling) which granted INEC the opportunity not to allow us to inspect the BVAS. Our concern really stems from the fact that INEC these days is not to be trusted. INEC will make a promise from one side of the mouth and then swallow their vomit from the other.

“Recall that in 2019, INEC promised that it had a server, only for those servers not to be available when litigants wanted to inspect the server that they claimed they had.

“INEC had gone out of their way to assure and reassure Nigerians again and again that election results will be uploaded from polling units to their server and that people are going to view these results from their server but you could see that when it was time for people to start uploading the results, INEC said it had a technical glitch even when they had explained to Nigerians that they had backup that will roll off into work immediately when the main server had a technical issue.

“All of these bring us to the point that even though INEC had assured us and the courts in their counter affidavits that the records in the BVAS will be saved in their backend server we have our doubts because this is not the first time INEC will be telling us that they have a server, they will upload to their server and so on and so forth.

“But the Court in their wisdom has given them privilege and you can see, immediately they got that judgment, they shifted the elections.

“If they knew they were going to postpone the governorship election for a week why did they go to court to vary the order given to us to inspect materials?

READ ALSO:PRESIDENTIAL POLL: Labour Party reveals move to prove BVAS was ‘perverted’

“There was absolutely no need for it because one of the reasons they gave to the court was that if they allowed us to inspect the BVAS it would affect the timeline for the election but surprisingly, after getting the court to grant them the request to reconfigure the BVAS they immediately shifted the election.

“One had a lot of doubts about the patriotism, commitment, truthfulness and integrity of this INEC to do what is right.

“The way and manner they conducted the last election has completely destroyed the confidence which I had in INEC. Let’s see what stories they will come up with tomorrow.”

He also noted that the commission was yet to allow it inspect materials used in the presidential election as ordered by a Federal High Court.

Both the Labour Party and the People’s Democratic Party had obtained a court order to be allowed to inspect the materials used in the conduct of the poll, including the BVAS.

Abure noted that LP lawyers had been going to INEC since the order was given but the commission was yet to allow it inspect any of the materials.

“Tomorrow is here it’s not far. Since the court gave the order for INEC to allow us inspect materials, INEC has not allowed us.

“We have not been able to inspect, our lawyers have been going there every day, our technical experts have been going there on daily basis and we have not been allowed access.

“At times you begin to wonder whether this INEC is working for Nigerians or some persons somewhere.

“I will be sincere with you, if INEC says they are going to Lagos, I will go and look for them in Sokoto,” he submitted.

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