CITIZENS COMPASS– A member of the 8th National Assembly from Kogi West Senatorial District, Dino Melaye; and former governor of Imo State, Emeka Ihedioha; on Monday, staged a walk out from the national collation center in Abuja.
Both are principal agents of the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar at the collation center.
Before the walk out, Dino had raised complained about irregularities in the collation of results at the state level.
He cited over voting in Ekiti State and urged INEC to discontinue with the manual collation in order to get accurate results.
Some other party agents threw their weight behind Dino insisting that collation should be done with the use of modern technology which may prevent any form of rigging.
However, INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu proceeded with the announcement of results.
Not satisfied, Dino, Emeka and some other party agents have walked out of the National Collation Centre for the presidential election results at the International Conference Centre in Abuja.
At about 4.30pm, the agents staged a walkout on the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu over dissatisfaction on the process of the collation of results from state collation officers for the presidential election (SCOPs).
The drama ensued around 4:30pm at the resumed collation exercise of the February 25 presidential election results for the second day.
Melaye, Ihedioha and the agents of five other parties had complained that the results presented by INEC SCOPs weren’t uploaded on the commission’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV), as repeatedly promised by the electoral umpire before the February 25 presidential poll.
Melaye argued strongly that without the upload of results electronically on IReV, this year’s election is not in any way different from the manual transmission of results done in 2015.
Melaye and others fiercely insisted that the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu must not accept the results of Ekiti, alleging that there were incidents of over voting and electoral irregularities.
But the INEC chairman maintained that there was no over voting in Ekiti and that the results presented by the SCOPs stand.
In reaction, Melaye, Ihedioha and about four others stormed out of the national collation centre.
However, some agents of political parties like Accord Party and others were in support of the ongoing announcement of presidential results.
