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Ahead Saturday’s governorship election in Anambra State, the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), has raised concerns that plots are being hatched to rig the state governorship election.
The national chairman of the party, Chief Sly Ezeokenwa, alleged that there was a plot to falsify the polling unit results of the election outside the state and bring the altered results into the state to replace the genuine polling unit results recorded during the election.
He also alleged that those behind the electoral fraud have also concluded arrangements to recruit fake police officers who would accompany those carrying the fake polling unit results into the state.
Meanwhile, the state chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Basil Ejidike, has expressed concern that a plot has been hatched to purchase the outcome of the governorship election through vote-buying.
The APC state chairman also complained about the use of local government chairmen’s offices or their visitors’ waiting rooms as Collation Centres.
He complained that past experiences, especially during the last bye-election in the state, had shown that security aides to the chairmen of the affected local government areas had chased opposition party members away from the collation centres and had a field day manipulating the poll results.
He therefore called on the electoral umpire to make an arrangement where local government offices of the council chairmen would not serve as Collation Centres in the governorship election.
Similarly, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Jude Ezenwafor, has also expressed worry that voting-buying had been perfected to manipulate the election.
Speaking while sharing similar views, chairman of the Inter-party Advisory Committee (IPAC), Chief Uchenna Ugwuoji enjoined the electoral umpire to expand the voting cubicle to accommodate the ballot box, so that a voter after thumb printing will drop the ballot paper into the ballot box before coming out to where the party agents are so that the latter will not have the opportunity of seeing which party the voter voted for, arguing that the arrangement will discourage vote buying.
The party leaders and candidates spoke during a meeting with the INEC chairman, Prof. Joash, and other top officials of the commission, as well as stakeholders in the governorship election, at the Prof. Dora Akunyili Women Development Centre in Awka on Tuesday.
Responding to the various concerns expressed by the party leaders and the PDP candidate, the INEC chairman assured that perfect arrangements had been put in place to guarantee that the election would not be rigged.
DIG Okolo also assured that non-state security actors would have no chance of causing violence or disrupting the free, fair, and credible outcome of the governorship election.
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