The Labour Party senatorial candidate for Abia South, Engineer Chinedu Onyeizu, has alleged the disenfranchisement of voters in last Saturday’s election.
Addressing journalists at Abayi Ohanze in Obingwa Local Government Area of the state, Onyeizu lamented that results of some polling units were excluded.
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He faulted the declaration of the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Enyinnaya Abaribe by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the winner of the election in the senatorial district.
Last Tuesday, INEC Returning Officer for Abia South National Assembly elections, Georgina Ugwuanyi, said Abaribe got the highest number of votes in the election, having scored 49,903 votes.
She further announced that Onyeizu scored 43,903, while Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party scored 28,422 votes to come third.
But an aggrieved Onyeizu said that it is a failure on the part of INEC to declare a winner in an inconclusive election where a total of 36,000 voters are likely to be disfranchised and totally reject the declaration by the returning officer who had earlier announced the exercise inconclusive.
“I must emphasise on the issue of disenfranchising a lot of Abia Southerners that are supposed to vote in 108 polling units where elections in those areas were declared inconclusive by INEC Returning Officer,” he stated.
“We want to know why in other parts of the country, polling units where elections didn’t hold, the returning officers declared them inconclusive and have announced dates for supplementary elections.
“We now want to know why in Abia State, Abia South, the polling units that were affected by perhaps cancellation of votes, over voting or areas where there were no elections, why are we not following the guidance as being applied in other parts of the country?”
