Guber election: Akinlade accuses INEC of rigging

The deputy governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ogun State, Adekunle Akinlade has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of subverting the wishes of the masses expressed during Saturday’s governorship election.

Akinlade called on the people of Ogun State to rise up to defend Nigeria’s democracy, saying officials of the Commission allowed themselves “to be used to rob Ogun electorates of their well earned victory by upturning the incontrovertible evidence that the PDP won the March 18th elections.”

He said the announcement of results from Sagamu and other local governments were deliberately delayed to enable the officials “to perfect their attempt to reduce the obvious numbers of Polling units where elections were cancelled by way of doctoring results sheets and other evidence.”

He said “80 PUs elections were either cancelled as a result of BVAS malfunction or violence by APC hired thugs and hoodlums who shot, burnt, and destroyed election materials across Sagamu, Odogbolu and other areas across the State.

“According to Section 24 (3) of the Electoral Act 2022 as amended, with over 34,000 electorate disenfranchised as a result of those cancellations, INEC ought to declare the March 18th elections inconclusive and order re-run in all the areas voting did not occur.

“We are therefore calling on the good people of Ogun State and electorates to identify and hold the officials involved in this attempted electoral robbery personally responsible for denying them their rights as entrenched in our Constitution.

“The PDP shall resist any attempt or attempts to rig the elections in favour of the APC.

“The results must be announced as collated and submitted to INEC. The election should be declared inconclusive in line with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 as amended, and INEC must abide by its own rules,” Akinlade said in a statement made available to newsmen by his media aide, Azeez Adelani.

Meanwhile, INEC has declared Governor Dapo Abiodun as the winner of the 2023 gubernatorial election in Ogun State.