Hon. Chukwuemeka Aneke, a leader of the Peoples Democratic Party, said the Independent National Electoral Commission should look into the alleged falsification of its monitoring report of the Labour Party primary election in Enugu West Senatorial District held on June 8, 2022.
He said that there were inconsistencies between a Certified True Copy that he had gotten from INEC and the paperwork that INEC had presented to the court to support the LP senatorial primary election claims.
In a letter dated November 10 and issued to INEC chairman Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, Aneke’s attorneys, Bonaventure Madu and Tobechukwu Enem, urged that the commission look into the alleged forgery with a view to disciplining those responsible.
He said that INEC had provided a copy of its Monitoring Report for the Enugu West Senatorial District primary held on June 8, 2022, to them on July 22 in response to their request.
In court on November 7, the petitioner stated that “INEC attached and exhibited a totally different and doctored report, dated September 9, and certified by one Ahmed Goni” in the case No. FHC/AB3/CS/1194/2022 at a Federal High Court in Abuja.
Aneke therefore demanded that INEC immediately withdrew the forged document from court within one week and prosecute officials of the commission involved in the criminal act. This was done in light of the aforementioned discrepancies between the two INEC reports.
He threatened that if INEC did not remove the fake monitoring report and start prosecuting the officials responsible, he would have no choice but to file a criminal complaint against the alleged defendants and the commission, followed by a civil lawsuit.
The letter read in part, “Curiously, during the court proceedings on November 7, 2022, in the said suit No. FHC/AB3/CS/1194/2022 at the Federal High Court, Abuja, your commission attached and exhibited a totally different and doctored INEC report of the Labour Party senatorial districts of Enugu State, dated September 9, 2022, and certified by one Ahmed Goni, and was tendered by Alhaji Abdulaziz Sani.”
According to the letter, while the forged report bears only one sub-item, which is the summary of the Enugu East Senatorial District Primary, the genuine INEC Monitoring Report bears the report of the three senatorial district primaries of Enugu State.
“The forged INEC report did not bear the INEC field teams’ report made by the monitoring team lead, Ezeabasill Kene, the Electoral officer of Ezeagu Local Government to the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Enugu State, indicating what actually happened at the venue of the primary election, which report is attached to Annexure 2 and is our genuine INEC Monitoring Report”, the petitioners said.
The letter claims that the real INEC Monitoring Report has information on all three of Enugu State’s senatorial districts, whereas the fake report only contains a single sub-item, which is a summary of the Enugu East Senatorial District Primary.
