Opposition lawmakers in the House of Representatives have contested the legitimacy of Governor Hope Uzodimma’s victory in the recent Imo governorship election.
Led by Ikenga Ugochinyere, the representative for Ideato Federal Constituency in Imo State, the lawmakers argue that the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) fail to accurately represent the votes cast during the election.
Ugochinyere asserts that the electoral process was allegedly tainted by practices such as rigging, intimidation, the non-use of the Biomodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine, and the false declaration of results in numerous polling units.
He contends that if votes from areas with reported over-voting and where elections were purportedly not held are excluded, it would reveal that Samuel Anyanwu, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, garnered the highest number of valid votes and should have been declared the winner.
He added that there are plans by the Information Technology ( IT) department of INEC to allegedly upload figures into the BVAS machines to tally with the results declared by the electoral body.
“We have already exposed evidence of massive over voting from result of BVAS machine accreditation which showed very low turnout and results showing high turnout.
“Moves are on currently in the IT Department of INEC to illegally upload accreditation figures into the BVAS machine to tally with fraud that was committed on Saturday.
“More than 90% of the votes allocated to Hope Uzodimma were not votes that passed through the accreditation process as the turnout in the election was very low and this could be because of the insecurity in Imo State, ” Ugochinyere stated.
