Scores of demonstrators stormed the gates of the Nationwide Meeting in Abuja on Thursday demanding to know why the Nationwide Chairman of the Impartial Nationwide Electoral Fee, Prof Mahmoud, failed to make use of the brand new voting know-how, Bimodal Voters Accreditation System, in some centres on the final governorship election in Kogi State.
The protesters insisted that the electoral umpire’s failure to additional deploy the INEC Outcome Viewing Portal for individuals to watch the ballot ends in real-time contributed to the victory of the All Progressives Congress candidate, Usman Ododo.
The protest comes a couple of hours after the Court docket of Enchantment sitting in Abuja on Thursday reserved judgment within the attraction filed by the governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Celebration, Murtala Ajaka, in opposition to the Might 27 ruling of the state election petition tribunal.
PUNCH on-line reported {that a} three-member panel of the tribunal had affirmed the November 11, 2023 election victory of Ododo.
Each the SDP and Ajaka challenged the APC candidate’s victory after INEC declared him the winner.
Chanting solidarity songs and displaying a number of banners that learn, ‘Nigerian judges, uphold BVAS integrity’, ‘Technicality can’t override BVAS’ and ‘BVAS: Safeguard Nigeria’s democratic future,’ the protesters, underneath the aegis of Involved Kogi Residents, appealed to the lawmakers and President Bola Tinubu to uphold the tenets of democracy.
Addressing newsmen on the entrance of the meeting, the chief of the protesters, Isaiah Ijele, mentioned, “Our protest is premised on the latest BVAS fraud within the Kogi State Governorship Election of November
11, 2023 the place the BVAS Know-how was bypassed resulting in the emergence of an unpopular candidate within the individual of Governor Usman Ododo.
“The ninth Nationwide Meeting wrote its title in gold when it amended the Electoral Legislation to provide the 2022 Electoral Act with a renewed hope that BVAS know-how shall be used to curb overvoting and different Electoral irregularities/fraud ceaselessly.
“Kogi individuals really feel so betrayed that after all of the assurances given by INEC that BVAS machines shall be used to curb overvoting, some INEC officers compromised and offered Kogi State out. We’re right here to attraction to the lawmakers to make use of their good workplace to save lots of democracy in Kogi State and Nigeria as an entire.
“We demand that BVAS be made obligatory for accreditation throughout elections and attraction that the INEC chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, be summoned earlier than the Senate to clarify to Nigerians why he authoriseed his workers and authorized staff to defend the malpractices that had been carried out.
“We additional demand that INEC ought to declare election outcomes from the IREV solely after confirming the precise variety of accredited voters on BVAS. We’ve got misplaced hope in professors conducting elections.”