In a statement announcing that it would dispute the results in court, the Labour Party criticised the methodology and compilation of the results of the nationwide presidential and National Assembly elections held on Saturday.
The party said that while many of its members were purposefully denied their rights in other parts of the nation, they were more discriminating in its strongholds.
In a statement released on Sunday in Kaduna, the LP’s national secretary, Umar Ibrahim, claimed that while the party had gained ground with high vote totals in the majority of the North, some of its members had been purposefully barred from casting ballots, violently ejected from polling places, or had ballot papers and boxes demolished and burned.
He listed the states of Lagos, Rivers, Bayelsa, Kano, Yobe, and Edo as examples of where such offences against the Election Act of 2022 as amended were frequently committed.
Ibrahim claimed that in some locations, INEC personnel and election supplies were either not deployed to locales known to be Labour Party strongholds or were deployed after the polls had already closed, frustrating party supporters who eventually grew weary of waiting and had to leave the polling places out of a sense of dread for the future.
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“The delay by INEC to upload and publish results, especially where Labour Party has already taken lead, is equally alarming, and we feel it is intended to enrage our party and our followers,” he said.
Ibrahim also disclosed that intelligence from the field indicated that voters identified as LP supporters were tactfully denied access to their polling places throughout the northern states by some INEC ad hoc staff who collaborated with others to persuade the electorates that their polling places were different while actually sending them to the incorrect ones.
According to him, this angered the electorate and decreased the votes the party received, which would have more than doubled if the correct things had been done.
