Polling Unit agents and Collation Centre agents in Port Harcourt have recounted their raw experience last Saturady, February 25, 2023, showing how results were never uploaded at the polling units.
Their accounts at a press briefing also revealed how the supervisory presiding officers (SPOs) who had the codes to enter results disappeared, thus making it impossible to upload results at various polling units and even beyond.
Addressing newsmen in Port Harcourt Wednesday, March 1, 2023, Francis Hanachor Eleto, Ward Collation officer for Okporo, Obio/Akpor Ward 2, said what happened was nothing but disaster and a disheartening experience.
Eleto said the polling agents and collation agents of the political parties went to work on the election armed with the order by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that elections results would be transmitted at the polling units.
The agent said surprisingly, no one result was transmitted. “We did everything possible at the polling units to upload the result, it was not possible. At the end of the whole thing, the supervisory polling officers (SPOs) who ought to be at the collation centres were nowhere to be around there.”
He recounted that when it became difficult for INEC and polling unit officers to upload the results due to the fact that the SPOs became incommunicado, the party agents began to help to make the calls and text messaging, but to no avail.
Eleto, an agent to the All Progressives Congress in Obio/Akpor LGA said they had to march to the Collation Centre to see how to upload the results. He said voters followed them but had to be turned back at a point.
He found that most INEC officers were entering polling units. “People were following them to the collation, and if not our intervention, calling on our agents to allow them move to the collation centres since that was where the SPOs were to be.”
Unfortunately, he stated, when they got to the Collation centres, there were no SPOs anywhere. “They had already been hijacked and taken away to where nobody knew.
What we saw at that place were INEC officials everywhere but they were not able to upload results. They were calling their SPOs to tell them what to do.’
According to the agent, the collation centre was full of persons forcing them to upload results. “Soldiers had to come in to see how to disperse the area because people were desperate to ensure that those results were uploaded from the polling units. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”
The APC agent said as far as he was concerned, the House of Representatives result and that of the senate were not reflecting what they were at the polling units.
He said: “It may seem that the person announced as the winner of the election is from the PDP. The APC has no advantage in the manipulation. It is a misplacement. APC won in most polling units in Obio/Akpor but they announced PDP winner”
In Rivers State, party affiliation toward the election was strange. Gov Nyesom Wike backed APC’s Bola Tinubu and urged all the local council chairmen to work for his victory. On the other hand, the governor backed the PDP National Assembly candidates. This created a strange voting pattern where PDP voted for APC on presidency but voted for PDP in other seats. Thus, any rigging attempt seemed to follow that pattern.
Asked to explain at what point mutilation of results as alleged took place, Eleto said the results were moved from polling units to LGA centres where he said party agents were chased away. “That was when the manipulation and doctoring of results took place. If they had uploaded results at the Polling Units and go to the Collation Centres to do the needful, we won’t be where we are today. At the LGA level, we were not to go inside.”
Backing Eleto’s testimony, Stanley Worgu Oroazi, an engineer that was agent for Ward 10, said what happened was very undemocratic. “First, in our respective units in Ward 10, and from information we got from Wards 9 and 11, the PDP stalwarts did not allow us to man our polling units.
“The amount of violence they came with was too much. At Polling Unit 74 Ward 10 and Polling Unit 72, they came to highjack both the papers and ballot box. There was not enough security. Most of them did not come with security personnel.
“Even the INEC officials were openly conniving with the hoodlums.”
He said things were peaceful at the beginning but when violence came, INEC disappeared. “A lot of the results they uploaded were false. They were a violation of the guidelines. The results were to be signed at the polling units.”
Both agents called for total cancellation of the senate and HoR results in Obio/Akpor. “The violation was more on the senate and HoR voting. That is why we are calling for the cancellation.
“We have made report to INEC. I wrote my report and sent to them. I asked INEC for their own report, but up till now, INEC has not written a report” so they could compare notes.
Results from Rivers State especially in Obio/Akpor have attracted international attention and many including the national leadership of the Labour Party have called for outright cancellation.
