Hon. Sam Onuigbo, the All Progressive Congress, APC, candidate for Abia Central senatorial seat, has claimed that the APC name and logo were omitted from the results sheets for the election held last Saturday.
The lawmaker who made the observation at a press conference in Umuahia on Wednesday, said the commission affected the documentation of his results.
A two-term House of Representatives member, Hon. Darlington Nwokocha of the Labour Party, was declared winner of the contest after polling 92,116 votes.
Col. Austin Akobundu (retd.) of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, came second with 41,477; while Onuigbo came third with 7,997 votes.
The APC candidate, accused INEC of making mess of his result with the omission.
“It is disheartening to inform you that INEC failed to include the name of my party on the result sheet for the 2023 Abia Central Senatorial election. The documentation of my scores in the election was shambolic due to the omission.”
Rep. Onuigbo who is the House Committee Chairman on Climate Change, blamed his fate at the poll on the error by INEC.
According to the lawmaker, his votes were “left at the mercy of Presiding Officers who chose to either leave out the result, record it among the invalid votes or in rare cases drew a column with their own hands to enter it”.
He, therefore, challenged INEC to explain the reason APC was committed on the result sheets.
Onuigbo who fought much legal battle to fly the APC flag, also wondered why the leadership of his party overlooked such gross omission in the first instance.
“This puzzle should be resolved by INEC and the leadership of my party, APC that made no effort to correct the anomaly at the appropriate time,”he said.
Onuigbo urged INEC to quickly resolve the observation to determine his fate.