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Heavy protest rocks Nigeria’s High Commission in London over presidential election
Several Nigerians have staged a massive protest at the country’s High Commission in London, the United Kingdom (UK).
The protest held on Thursday, March 9, 2023, was led by former Presidential spokesman, Reno Omokri.
The crowd expressed anger and disappointment at the conduct of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and demanded the nullification of Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the February 25 presidential elections.
Speaking at the event, Mr. Omokri noted that from the INEC’s IREV portal, overvoting was observed in almost 14,000 polling units, which affected 4.3 million votes, and manual accreditation was carried out in these and other polling units, in contravention of Sector 47 (2) and (3) of the Electoral Act.
He said that by virtue of those portions of the Act, elections in those areas ought to have been cancelled and held on a latter date.
Calling for a cancellation of the election for a more credible one, Mr. Omokri said that “INEC was obviously not ready, and yet went on with the election with blind spots that allowed the ruling party to use underhand practices to rig the election.”
He continued saying that “the INEC postponed the gubernatorial election because they were ill prepared, which was what they ought to have done with the Presidential election if they had no hidden agenda.”
Addressing the group of protestors further, Pastor Omokri said the protest was not about any political party but a united course to demand free and fair election from INEC for all Nigerians.
According to Omokri, Nigeria as the giant of Africa is supposed to lead other smaller African countries with credible polls. Sadly however, it is the smaller African countries that are conducting credible polls while the polls in Nigeria are always fraught with many issues such as rigging, violence, vote-buying, and emergence of unpopular candidates as the winner of the election against the will of the people.
He said, “African countries that are smaller vote and then their votes go well. And then we have our own vote and then we have all of these issues. Not one single country or one single institution outside Nigeria has said that those polls were good.”
“Chatham House few days ago said the polls did not meet the required standards. The American Ambassador said this polls did not meet the expectations of Nigerians. “
“So, what we are saying here today is that we want credible polls.”
“We are not here for PDP. I’m a member of PDP. I support PDP but we are not here for PDP at all.”
“Some of you, you’re Obidients. …we are united! We are not united for PDP; we are not united for Labour. We are united for Nigeria.”
Recall that INEC on March 1, 2023, announced Tinubu as the winner of the election with a total of 8,794,726 votes, having also scored over 25 percent of the votes cast in 30 states.
Atiku, a former vice-president, came second with 6,984,520 votes, while Obi polled a total of 6,101,533 votes to emerge third place.
Addressing an international press conference on March 2, Obi had vowed to challenge the electoral process in court, insisting his party won the election but had been robbed of its mandate.
“We will explore all legal and peaceful options to reclaim our mandate. We won the election and we will prove it to Nigerians,” he said.
Atiku made a similar claim and vow. Also, the winner of the election had approached the court as well to defend his victory.
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