APC rejects result of Isoko North by-election in Delta

The All Progressives Congress (APC), has rejected the result of April 10, Isoko North Constituency by-election in Delta, describing it as a charade and not true reflection of the process.

Mr Sylvester Imonina, the state APC Publicity Secretary, said this a statement on Friday in Asaba.

Imonina said that the party came to the conclusion following a thorough review of the election process which saw the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) emerging as the winner.

He said that the PDP used agents of political retrogressions to win the election.

Imonina urged the anti-graft commissions, ICPC and EFCC, to investigate the process to build trust in future elections in the state.

According to him, APC after a painstaking analysis of information before it has come to an irresistible conclusion that the Isoko North constituency by-election held on the April 10, was massively rigged.

“It was nothing but a sham and product of political robbery.

“It would be recalled that on the eve of the election, APC drew the attention of security personnel and the general public to undiluted information that PDP stalwarts were reaching out to their members in neighbouring LGAs to use their voter cards for the by-election.

“True to APC’s genuine alarm, when opposition and its rigging machineries discovered that there was voters’ apathy towards the election they resorted to massive rigging.

“Also worthy of note was that there was system failure. Information at our disposal says that all manner of cards to wit, drivers license, national identity cards and other related cards were used in carrying out multiple voting in majority of places during the by-election,” he said.

Imonina added: “In all these, the card readers deployed for the exercise never rejected any. It is either someone hired by the opposition party hacked into INEC database and electronic facilities or there was compromised by some INEC top official.

“Worthy of mentioning is that more than 90 per cent of INEC ad-hoc staff deployed to polling units refused to transmit the data in their card readers to INEC server, claiming that they were not trained on how to handle that aspect of the election.”

He said that while poverty pervaded in the state, it was disheartening that the opposition party’s stalwarts, leaders were mobilised with huge sums of money.

“For the sake of future elections and belief and hope for a better Nigeria, APC calls on Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to probe the processes surrounding the by-election,” he said.