2023: Imo PDP Rejects Plans To Hold Okigwe Elections At Single Location

:Describes Decision As Plot By Imo APC To Rig Polls

Ahead of 2023 polls,the Peoples Democratic Party in Imo has rejected plans to centralise all the elections at a particular location.
In a release signed by the party’s publicity Secretary, Collins Opuruzo and made available to Lead, the party described the plan as a plot by the APC led administration in Imo to rig the election in the area.
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Imo State rejects in totality the move by INEC to disenfranchise the people of Okigwe LGA of the State by unconstitutionally and arbitrarily collapsing all the polling units in the area and centralizing voting in the entire LGA at a single location, precisely at the Okigwe Township Stadium.

It is important for Nigerians to know that this anti-democratic contrivance was resorted to by INEC at the behest of Senator Hope Uzodinma.

Our Party had alerted Nigerians that the anti-people regime of Senator Uzodinma in Imo State was scheming so relentlessly to truncate democracy in the country. Today, we have been vindicated.

The whole idea behind this grand design by the Uzodinma-led APC regime in Imo is to violently rig the elections in Okigwe LGA on Saturday February 25th and on Saturday March 11th, 2023 using the Ngor/Okpala Bye-election formula.

To achieve this, Imo APC has perfected plot to flood Okigwe LGA with Ebubeagu Militia and fake security personnel, whose duty would be to take over the Stadium in question, hijack election materials and implement a script already written in Imo State Government House.

Aware of its looming defeat across the State, Imo APC has also intensified pressure on the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in the State, Prof. Sylvia Agu, to include many other parts of the State as places where this rigging strategy will be vehemently enforced.

Our Party, therefore, holds very strongly that this arrangement by INEC clearly runs foul of the provisions of the extant laws that regulate elections in Nigeria.

To be clear, Section 6 of the INEC Regulation and Guideline for the Conduct of Elections explicitly states that voting in any election to which the regulations and guidelines apply shall take place at Polling Units Established by the Constitution. Similarly, Section 24(a) of the Electoral Act insists that, “Results of all the Elections shall be announced by the Presiding Officers at the Polling Units.”

Imo PDP warns that any attempt to rig the 2023 elections in Okigwe LGA or any other part of the State will be met with stiff resistance. Imo people must be allowed to exercise their inalienable right to choose their leaders, and anything short of that is an invitation to anarchy.

Our Party, while calling on INEC to immediately rescind this decision, also invites the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to caution the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Imo State. She must never allow herself and the integrity of the Commission to be ruined by the same forces of darkness who desecrated the Supreme Court of Nigeria and left the revered judicial institution with a battered image.

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