Sowore rejects presidential election results, says INEC was not ready

 

Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), says the election results do not “reflect the will of the people”.

 

His statement comes amid criticisms of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over its failure to electronically transmit results to its portal.

 

On Wednesday, Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the commission, declared Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the election.

 

Yakubu said the APC standard bearer secured a total of 8,794,726 votes to win the election.

 

Meanwhile, Sowore was only able to garner 14, 608 votes in the election.

 

Speaking in his state of the nation address on Wednesday, Sowore said the 2023 presidential election “did not meet any legal requirements of what should be called a free, fair and credible election”.

 

“This particular election, by their own standard, did not meet any of the legal requirements that say every election result must be scanned and uploaded to the INEC server. But there is nothing new about it, before this election, I had said INEC wasn’t ready for this election,” he said.

 

 “We categorically condemn the election that was held on the 25th of February as a fraudulent election that didn’t meet the standard of what should be called a free, fair and credible election.

 

“There is nothing surprising about it. We knew that these criminals in our system have no interest in organising a free and fair election. What they did was a selection as they usually do, they have just given you the candidate of the choice of the criminal political elite in Nigeria.

 

“Any figures, either for me or against me or them or against them that you see during this election were concocted and manufactured fraudulently.”

 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) have also called for a fresh election.

 

The opposition parties also demanded the resignation of Yakubu as INEC chairperson.