Why Anambra election should be nullified, by APC

The All Progressives Congress (APC) gave
reasons yesterday why the Anambra State
governorship election should be
cancelled.
In a statement by its National Publicity
Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the
party said its demand was "based on the
massive disenfranchisement of people
across the state, caused by the blatant
incompetent and/or deliberate sabotage
by the electoral commission itself".
The party said the call for total
cancellation supersedes its early call for a
rerun in four local government areas,
"based on the report received from
agents as well as from local and foreign
observers during the poll".
It accused Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) of inexplicably using a
voters' register that is totally different
from what it gave to political parties
ahead of the election, with the result that
the new register did not contain the
names of most of the registered voters.
The party said: "Worse still, delivery of
materials to the stongholds of the APC
candidate, Senator Chris Ngige, was either
done very late or not at all, a
development that further robbed over
300,000 of his supporters in three key
local governments of Idemili North,
Idemili South and Awka South of their
franchise.
''After consultations with our agents as
well as with local and foreign observers,
we have discovered that what we earlier
complained about was a child's play,
compared to the widespread
disenfranchisement that was orchestrated
by the same body given the responsibility
of ensuring a free, fair and creditable
election on Saturday.
''We discovered that INEC has set up a
multi-layer arrangement to ensure that
most voters in the state were
disenfranchised, apparently acting out a
script to manipulate the result of the
election in favour of a certain candidate.
Where voting materials were supplied,
the commission provided wrong voters'
register."
''Coming after the charade in Delta, this is
a serious development that raises
questions about the ability of INEC to
conduct free, fair and transparent
elections anywhere in Nigeria. It is
particularly serious because if people who
registered to vote are not able to do so,
and even the votes of those who
managed to cast them do not count, then
anarchy is looming,'' APC said.
It called for a probe of INEC to determine
why it sabotaged its own elections, even
when people are determined to endure
the orchestrated inconveniences and shun
all acts of violence, as was witnessed in
Anambra on Saturday when people waited
patiently and peacefully, only to go home
in total disappointment.
''This is a new low for INEC, and unless
something is done urgently, the electoral
commission may plunge Nigeria into a
crisis from which it may not recover,'' the
APC warned.