The United Progressive Party (UPP) candidate in the upcoming Anambra Governorship election, Osita Chidoka, has expressed disappointment in the Independent National Electoral Commision (INEC).
The UPP candidate who appeared as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Thursday, explained that the electoral body has said it would not transmit results from the polling units to the central server, a decision which according to him, is a threat to the electoral process.
While this process has been approved and made possible by the law, he alleged that INEC has chosen to do otherwise.
“Our approach is that INEC has done a major disservice to this country by refusing to do the transmission of results from the polling units to their central server.
“All that has been on before and yet we got many cases of election malpractice. The issue was that if the result has been transmitted from the 4,608 polling units in Anambra state, it means that by the time we take the result from the polling units to the ward for collation, it will just be for us to collate what we already know but now they are leaving a gap where as happened in previous elections in Anambra or in other states, when you get to the collation centre and the collation officers will now collate something different from what is in form EC8A – If that happens, nobody else can reverse that except the court; that the challenge.
“I thought that INEC had made a quantum leap to get to the point where once the results are announced in the polling units, it is inputted into their card reader.”
Mr Chidoka, however, stated that although he was disappointed with the development, his team is well prepared to tackle the situation.
“I’m disappointed but I’m encouraged that we are ready for the election.
“It is a game dampener for me and when I asked the INEC Chairman, I got what I would consider as a strange reason for this – that INEC guidelines have not been updated to accept using the electronic transmission. The law has been amended, allowing INEC to use electronic forms.
“Why will it take INEC longer than it took the National Assembly,” he questioned.
He, however, listed some of the processes on his part, that is being put in place to curb any form of breakdown of law and order that may arise.
Furthermore, he expressed satisfaction with and optimism about the preparations so far, ahead of Saturday’s elections.
“From the standpoint of my campaign, we are very satisfied, today has been an interesting day for us, all our volunteers were unharmed, we made contact with all our people at the local government, at the world level, we tested our new application with the movement of the sensitive materials with INEC.
“One of the new things we’ve added is that we’ve added an incident form that includes reporting the names of the officers in charge of every polling unit – So, if there is any manipulation, we will not be saying INEC, we will be talking about the officer who is involved and we will put the person’s name in our hall of infamy.
“We are going to be having a website, it will be live on social media, starting from Saturday morning, we will be reporting in real time, infractions in the various wards and if we get to the collation centers and there is misbehavior by the police, any police without a name tag, we will be reporting that officer online and we will be taking photographs of all incidents happening around all the polling units,” Mr Chidoka stated.
Channels tv
0 comments:
Post a Comment
All content except noted photos and videos copyright © 2023, King Angela Uyi Creations.
All rights reserved. *Any images or videos not listed as mine are copyright to their respective owners and were used under creative common license or fair use standards. IF A PHOTO OR VIDEO IS YOUR MATERIAL AND YOU DO NOT WISH IT TO BE ON THE SITE, PLEASE EMAIL Us angelaeuyi@gmail.com AND WE WILL REMOVE IT IMMEDIATELY. Content created and maintained by King Angela Uyi.