Group urges INEC to complete collation of results in Imo North Senatorial District

The Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA), a civil society organisation, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to do the right thing by completing the collation of results and make a declaration and return a winner in Imo North Senatorial District.

The Returning Officer on 23rd February declared the senatorial election in the zone inconclusive.

The group urged INEC to conduct elections in the two local government areas out of the six in the district.

It knocked Senator Benjamin Uwajimogu, for parading himself as winner of the elections, alleging that he printed his own result sheets, entered figures into the result sheets and parades those figures as having returned him as elected.

The Legal and Communications Director of CTA, Mr. Ohazuruike Tochukwu, disclosed this during a press conference on Tuesday in Abuja.

He said that the Returning Officer, Prof. Donatus Ohajianya, was conscripted by Senator Uwajimogu to announce the results entered in the fake sheets and declare him winner.

He said: “Senator Uwajimogu claims he won an election yet neither he nor his agent is in possession of the result sheet upon which he claims victory.

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“He only got the Returning Officer to join him in making the claim that there was a return. No other political party has a result. No security agency has the result.

“Indeed, Nigerians must know that while the duplicate result sheets INEC used in the National Legislative elections were blue in colour, the fake one printed by Senator Uwajimogu were pink in colour.

“How could it only be the Imo North Senatorial District that would have a different colour of duplicate copies?

“When the Imo State Resident Electoral Commissioner summoned stakeholders in the Senatorial District to a meeting to probe into these allegations, the Senator got faceless groups to threaten the security of the lives and property of the Commission and its staff.

“He tried to blackmail the REC to overlook the electoral crime committed and forward his name to Abuja for presentation of his Certificate of Return.

“A Senator that should be under Police investigations for forging INEC result sheets and presenting same as genuine when he knew they were obviously fake is now the one sponsoring faceless groups to put pressure and malign INEC to present him with a Certificate of Return.”

CTA called on the INEC to make an official report to the Inspector General of Police calling for criminal investigation and prosecution of Senator Uwajimogu and Prof. Donatus O. Ohajianya.

It asked the accused Senator to: Show Nigerians a copy of the Result with which he says he won the Imo North Senatorial District election; show Nigerians a video of the Returning Officer declaring him as the winner of the election as he claims even if from a phone; he should disclose to Nigerians why the official result sheet for the election does not contain any entries made for Ehime Mbano and Isiala Mbano Local Government Areas as the Returning Officer was yet to make the entries into them.

“INEC should in this circumstance do the only right thing which is to complete the collation of results and make a declaration and return a winner.

“INEC should know that where this type of criminal act is allowed to go unpunished, that politicians will in subsequent elections print their own result sheets and then struggle for who the Returning Officer will declare his own.

“It will permanently destroy the credibility and sanctity of our elections. This evil introduced by this Senator must be nipped in the bud,” he said.

CTA urged INEC to make the findings of the Committee set up to look into the matter with a view to ascertaining the veracity or otherwise of allegations of misconduct in the election public so that Nigerians will understand and appreciate what it has done.