Before Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was announced as the winner of the 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the African Action Congress (AAC) withdrew its agent from the national collation centre in Abuja over alleged non-transparency by the electoral umpire.
In a statement released shortly after the withdrawal by Femi Adeyeye, the national publicity secretary of the party, AAC who fielded Omoyele Sowore as its presidential candidate, joined other political parties in accusing INEC of breaching the electoral law after it failed to upload result sheets at the (polling) unit levels to its portal. The statement read; “Section 60 (5) of the 2022 electoral act empowers INEC to prescribe guidelines for the transmission of election results. Pursuant to that subsection, INEC clearly stipulated in clause 38 of its regulations and guidelines that election results must be transmitted electronically via the BVAS after the announcement at the polling units. “Section 64 (4a&b) of the electoral act, 2022 lends further credence to the transmission to the iRev before they are announced to Nigerians. Why is the rule being bent at this time?
“Our national secretary who is also our national election collation agent has consistently raised this breach of the electoral act and INEC guidelines at the national collation centre but the INEC chairman keeps dodging addressing these concerns. “This is why we have decided to withdraw our collation agent from the charade and illegality going on at the national collation centre since our probing questions to the commission have remained unanswered till this minute. “We call on INEC to follow the law and its own guidelines and also call for the cancellation of results not uploaded, collated and read from the server, in accordance with the electoral act and guidelines. “Elections should be reconducted in areas ridden with vote buying, intimidation, violence, technical issues with BVAS and other malpractices stated by parties and independent monitoring bodies.”