The Labour Party (LP), a prominent opposition party in Nigeria’s 2023 elections, has rejected the current process of collating and announcing the results of the presidential election in Abuja.
On Monday, the party stated that it was taking this stance because INEC had not published all the results from polling units on its iREV server.
The Labour Party raised concerns about the integrity of the collation and announcement process at the national collation centre in Abuja.
Similar concerns were raised by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the collation of the presidential election results resumed at the National Collation Centre in Abuja on Monday.
Peter Obi, Labour Party candidate is among the four presidential candidates who have secured victory in at least one state in the elections.
All Nigeria Latest News had reported that INEC on Sunday, admitted the slow uploading of polling unit results on its result viewing portal (IRev). The commission said the problem is due to technical hitches.
“It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations,” INEC said in a statement. It, however, assures Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems and that the IReV remains well-secured.
Some political parties including the PDP have protested the delay in the uploading of the presidential election results on the election results Viewing portal (IRev), insisting that collation will not continue until that is done.
They also claimed that there are cases of over-voting in the results of Ekiti and Kwara states as presented by their collation officers and Resident Electoral Commissioners.
Other parties like NRM and APC asked INEC to ignore this call.
But the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, insisted that the cases of over-voting should have been flagged at either their polling units during counting, the registration areas, during local government collation or at the state collation centres. The parties have their representatives in all three levels, he said.
He said while the commission has the power to review the electoral process, “it is contingent” after the initial “process is concluded.”