The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has chastised the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for allegedly issuing directives designed to obstruct the issuance of Certified True Copies (CTC) of form EC8A.
Mr Charles Aniagwu, spokesman for the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, stated this at a news conference on Friday in Asaba.
Aniagwu claimed that INEC headquarters directed the Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) in states and the FCT to ensure comparison with its Result Viewing Portal (IRev) data before issuing CTC of form EC8A.
He urged INEC to do right thing by allowing the states, which were the original source of the documents to issue same without comparing with the IREV data.
Aniagwu, said that why the PDP was seeking the CTC of the form EC8A was to enable it prove its case at the Presidential election tribunal.
He noted that INEC’s directive to state RECs to compare with IREV figures would be detrimental to its case since the party was already disputing the contents of the IREV data.
According to him, the Presidential election has come and gone but because our party is not satisfied with the conduct of the election, we felt that there is need to challenge the outcome in the court of law.
“We were able to get a court judgement asking INEC to avail us all relevant documents that will assist us in proving our case.
“We are, however, taken aback that INEC in an unsigned document sent to State Resident Electoral Commissioners directed them not to issue the form EC8A without comparing with IREV records at the Commission’s headquarters.
“This directive is a departure from the usual procedure for the issuance of Certified True Copies of form EC8A which has to do with results from the states.
“The most important data here is the primary data which are domiciled with the RECs of states and INEC knows that the directive is not the right procedure hence they refused to sign the document,” Aniagwu said.
He said that the IREV portal was already being interrogated by the party while pleading with INEC to allow the RECs to upload the CTC of form EC8A without recourse to the IRev.
“The IREV portal in this instance is secondary data because the primary data which is the form EC8A is domiciled with the RECs.
“We cannot at this moment believe that what was uploaded in the IREV portal will be what actually transpired because of the delay in the upload of the data.
“In the actual fact, it is INEC headquarters that is supposed to confirm from the states and not the other way round because the primary source of the form EC8A is the States,” Aniagwu said.
On the governorship election in Delta, Aniagwu said the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state had no case with the election as Sheriff Oborevwori won fair and square.
“The Delta State Governorship election was won fair and square and for Sen. Ovie Omo-Agege and the APC to run to the media claiming manipulations in parts of the state, particularly the 21 local governments the PDP won is preposterous and we urge him to go and prepare for 2027.
“This election is won and lost and they know because they brought forward a candidate that is not acceptable to the people of Delta.
“So, we advise the APC in Delta to begin to organise themselves possibly for 2027 because the governorship election result is a true reflection of what happened on ground,” he added.