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The Abia State candidate of the Labour Party, Dr. Alex Otti has declared that no amount of manipulation can alter the party’s victory in the state.
Otti made this known even as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) continues the verification of election results from the state.
The electoral commission has suspended the collation of governorship election results in Abia State following claims that the ruling PDP in the state attempted to rewrite the results in Obingwa Local Government to overturn the original results as already collated by INEC officials.
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Meanwhile, results released on the INEC website, so far, show Otti leading in 10 out of the 17 local government areas in the state as declared by the INEC.
Otti had polled a total of 171,747 votes while Okey Ahiwe of PDP has 79,477 votes after winning five LGAs.
But the governorship candidate during a press conference in Abuja, said the use of BVAS has exposed the fraud being perpetrated in Obingwa Local Government over the years by the ruling party in the state.
Otti said: ‘What has happened this time around is that the BVAS has demystified Obigwan Local Government in Abia State.
‘You recalled that in 2015, when I contested for the first time, the PDP produced 82 thousand votes from Obigwan and upturned the victory that Abia people gave us. This time around, they want to do the same thing but the BVAS proved that there are no more than 30,000 votes in Obingwa.
’16 local government areas have been collated out of 17 and the total votes that Labour Party scored out of the 16 local government areas is about 172,000 and that of PDP is less than 80,000. So anyhow you flip and dice it with the numbers they have written, it still doesn’t have the support that would upturn our victory.
‘It’s also important to underscore the point that we believe that INEC will do the right thing. All the other local governments that have been declared through the BVAS machine for accreditation, it is our firm believe that INEC will not change the rules in the middle of the game.
‘We are calling on our supporters to remain calm and wait on INEC to finish their review and release the results.
‘The other important thing is that we also thanking INEC because we believe the BVAS is a game changer, particularly if there is away to use it properly.’
He however called on the people of Abia to remain calm and law abiding as INEC reviews the results from the election.
