Kenneth Okonkwo, a former spokesperson for the Labour Party (LP) Presidential Campaign Council, stated on Monday that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must upload the complete and unaltered results of the election on February 25 in order for the declaration of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to be relevant.
This was said by Okonkwo in a Monday interview with Arise News.
The leader of the LP referred to INEC as a “failed organisation that cannot even follow the letter of the law.”
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He cited Section 62, Subsections 2 and 3 of the Electoral Act while noting that the electoral board was required to provide the election results from all polling places.
Okonkwo said, “Whether it is a pre-election or post-election issue, the law says INEC should update, compile election result on polling unit by polling unit basis throughout Nigeria, and whoever wishes to receive a copy of it should be given one”
In addition, he claimed that INEC had fallen short of its obligations because the results have still not been properly uploaded months after the election.
The former campaign spokesman said, “They just brought up figures and announced to the whole world shamefully after months of such declaration. 18,088 uploaded results are still blurred, blank and nothing given by INEC. There is no court judgement that can overrule that because we were given such things from the INEC IReV portal.”
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He argued that as judges only have the authority to interpret the law and not to alter it, they must be held accountable to statutory laws.
Okonkwo said, “Whoever is telling you that anybody won that election, it’s a conjecture, and this is no matter what the court says. Because statutory laws in our hierarchy of laws in Nigeria is superior to decided cases, and time has come where we should be holding the judiciary accountable to statutory laws. They do not have the right to make laws. The only right they have is to interpret it.
“So, what we are saying, it’s not about who won or lost, we are saying that election should be free, fair, and credible. Credible means believable. Justice should not only be done, it should be seen as done. Please, if you have seen the result polling unit by polling unit, either based on original unmutilated form EC8a or electronically stored and uploaded result of INEC polling unit by polling unit in 176,000 units in Nigeria, please, show me, and I will be willing to tow your line. You can’t come and bamboozle Nigerians.
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“As long as those results are hidden in shadows, not in substance, whatever is the result, whatever is the declaration by the court, you cannot convince anybody anywhere in the world, because it is not the judiciary that puts people in power in a democracy, it is the people. The people have voted, show them the results of their vote, so that they will, with certainty, tell you, yes, we believe.”
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