The Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council (LPPCC) on Monday said that the results of the general election held on Saturday, February 25, as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), have the potential to throw the country into chaos.
The LPPCC further warned that it should not be held accountable if Nigerians, particularly, youths decide to react violently to the result of the general election.
The Campaign Council at a press briefing headed by its Director General, Akin Osuntokun in Abuja, called on INEC to suspend the further announcement of the results, and follow its own guidelines or completely cancel the entire election and make plans for another election with strict compliance with the stipulated laws and guidelines.
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Osuntokun said:
INEC result has the potential to throw Nigeria into chaos The President promised Nigerians free and fair elections with the passage of the new Electoral Act and indeed has repeated this promise multiple times.
The INEC Chairman also came before Nigerians and the Global community to promise free and fair elections and severally reiterated its readiness to conduct the elections.
What has become glaring is that none of these promises has been kept. All the promises made about
deploying a fail-safe system anchored on BVAS were
broken.
The statement read further,
The internet and social media are awash with videos and photographic evidence of the pervasive violence and attacks that were visited on Nigerians with some attacks still ongoing across the country as we speak.
In addition, the evidence of collusion between INEC and the security forces to subvert the will of the people is too numerous to be detailed here.
The INEC guidelines on the conduct of the elections were extensively breached and INEC has evidently been very reluctant to make the necessary adjustment to remedy the situation.
Read further,
Contrary to the publicly advertised guidelines for the conduct of the elections, we are convinced that the processes leading to the results have been severely compromised. Consequently, we regret to state that we have lost confidence in the results being collated and being announced.
Nigerians have inundated us with calls and protests over INEC’s non-compliance with provisions of the electoral guidelines and the obvious manipulations of the election results.
We hereby call on INEC to suspend the further announcement of the results and follow its own guidelines or completely cancel the entire election and make plans for another election with strict compliance with the stipulated laws and guidelines.
We ask the international community to walk their talk in Nigeria and cease to condone the multiple evils being perpetrated in our country by the rulers of Nigeria. There cannot be one standard for Nigeria, and another for the rest of the world.
Osuntokun, however, urged Nigerians to remain peaceful and law-abiding, assuring that the party was doing everything within the law to protect the people’s sacred mandate.
Meanwhile, speaking at a separate press briefing in Abuja, Head of Obi-Datti Media Office, Diran Onifade, noted that:
This is a national election.
We as a party are only participants.
The citizens are also stakeholders.
In every democracy, the office of the citizens is the highest office.
We cannot as a political party control what citizens may want to do and therefore, nobody should hold us responsible for whatever action citizens take for whatever reason.
We have played our own part in this election.
