2023 elections: Dino Melaye alleges fraud in Ekiti results
By David Lawani
Senator Dino Melaye, one of the spokesmen of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has alleged fraud in the Ekiti state results of the 2023 presidential election.
Melaye made the allegation while addressing pressmen at the International Conference Centre, the venue of the National Collation Centre in Abuja, stressing that a lot of results were not uploaded to the server directly from the polling units.
He said INEC had failed and if care was not taken, party agents might “just be at the collation center to endorse the fraud that the commission looked up for the political parties to swallow, despite the assurance that they will upload results timeously.”
He said: ” A few minutes ago, we raised the issue of the fact that by the provision of the Electoral Act, Section 60 and section 40 of the Electoral Act 2022 as amended that there’ll be the transmission of results from the polling units. And then the INEC chairman has repeatedly told Nigerians that there will be the transmission of a lot of results from polling units directly to the server.
“We find out that this has not been done. INEC failed in this regard. And when this issue was raised today, supported by other party agents, the national chairman of INEC evaded vehemently because what section 47 emphasize is that wherever the card reader or the BVAS failed, if they cannot get a replacement election should be canceled in that area.
” And we have seen from the presentation of the results from yesterday that some places were canceled as a result of bypassing BVAS. So the only way to detect that BVAS has been bypassed is for us to see the uploaded results.
” And we insisted that the chairman should show us here now the uploaded results state by state just like the way they are displaying the collected results they are presenting and that is the only way to test the veracity and authenticity of these results.
” If not, we are only here to endorse the fraud that has been done from the units to the world to the states. We are not here to rubber stamp infractions. We’re not here to rubber-stamp the abnormalities that have been done. We are here to check them but the national chairman of INEC is not allowing us to question what they are doing.
” He is saying that all has been done meaning we are here to rubber stamp and we are going to prove that we’re not here to rubber stamp. We have no other country to call our home but this country, we are going to do everything humanly possible to make sure that the right thing must be done.
” We have just met now with other political parties and we are going to make a presentation by the time we resume and if they insist that they are not going to respond to us then you will see the action we will take.
” We will not allow. We have suffered pain in this country, we suffered poverty, hunger, and kidnapping killings, and we will not allow a continuation of failure. We must make sure that the right is done.
“Nigerians are watching, the world is watching, even the dead are watching to see what INEC will do, but the battle to make sure that only authentic results will be announced here today, Is a battle of no retreats no surrender”, he noted.
