Hundreds of supporters of both the Labour Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Chijioke Edeoga, and the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate, Peter Mbah, stormed the Enugu State headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Monday. They protested alleged irregularities in the collation of results from Saturday’s governorship election.
PDP supporters, who arrived in large numbers, demanded that the Returning Officer announce the results for Nkanu East, where collation had been suspended over accusations of over‑voting and manipulation. They insisted that INEC should declare their candidate the winner and argued that the Collation Officer, Returning Officer, or Resident Electoral Commissioner had no authority to cancel results at this stage.
In contrast, Labour Party supporters called for the Nkanu East results to be cancelled on the grounds of irregularities. Protest leader Eric Eyutchae said, “They want INEC to complete the sham, saying we should go to court; we won’t accept it! Our demand is that votes that didn’t meet the threshold of the election requirements should be cancelled. We also demand that places where elections did not hold or were cancelled because of violence be conducted before final results are announced.”
Meanwhile, INEC announced in Abuja that it had suspended the collation of governorship election results in Enugu State. Festus Okoye, INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, released a statement indicating a review of results for Nsukka and Nkanu East Local Government Areas. He referenced a similar decision made for Abia State after thugs invaded INEC’s office in the Obingwa Local Government Area on Sunday. Okoye said, “The commission met today, Monday, 20 March 2023, and reviewed the conduct of the governorship and state assembly elections held nationwide on Saturday, 18 March 2023. Arising from the meeting, the commission decided to suspend forthwith further collation of the governorship election results in some parts of Abia and Enugu states.”
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