Declare Obi winner of 2023 presidential election, Labour Party tells INEC
The Labour Party has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare Peter Obi, its presidential candidate, the winner of the just-concluded February 25 presidential and national assembly election.
In a press statement released on Monday, Prince Kennedy Ahanotu, the National Youth Leader of the Labour Party, accused INEC of colluding with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to deliberately manipulate the entire process and its result in favour of the APC.
“Thank you for your massive votes for the Labour Party. It’s no longer news that the election that was conducted on 25th February 2023, was marred by massive irregularities and could not just be regarded as a political disappointment but has consequentially endangered Nigeria’s democracy.
“An election where the electoral umpire INEC deliberately refused to respect their establishment act, the “Electoral Act 2022. An election in which the people’s popular choice at the various polling units across Nigeria is under serious jeopardy. An election that even some key observers have complained about its process,” the statement read.
Labour Party stated that the results as announced by the electoral umpire does not in any way reflect the wishes of Nigerians as encapsulated by the results collated.
“The results being announced does not reflect and correspond with the results of the votes casted by Nigerians at their various polling units,” it said.
As a consequence of INEC’s failure to ensure a transparent process devoid of electoral malpractices, Ananotu made the following demands.
“1. That His Excellency Mr. Peter Obi be declared the winner of 2023 Presidential Election and be returned as elected with the popular demand principle.
“2. That further collation of the various state election result in the International Conference Center ICC be suspended henceforth without same result being uploaded or readily available on the INEC IREV platform.
“3. That the already announced Ekiti State result be revisited and dully verified before final collation. Very important.”
Read also: Peter Obi votes, says I;m prepared to solve Nigeria;s challenges
APC condemns Obasanjo over cancellation of results call
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has condemned in strong terms the call by former president Olusegun Obasanjo on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to stop the collation of election results and the cancellation of already computed results, an action it sees as “truncation of the ongoing electoral process.”
In a press statement released on Monday, Dele Alake, the Special Adviser for Media, Communications, and Public Affairs for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, titled, “OBASANJO’s MISCHIEF AND HYPOCRISY ON DISPLAY AGAIN” the party asked Nigerians to ignore the mischief of the former president.
According to APC, “Obasanjo repeated without the slightest iota of evidence the rumours he had picked up that the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System had been compromised and that the results of elections being announced are fraudulent. It is tragic that a former President who ought to be a statesman in comportment and speech will recklessly seek to endanger and derail our democratic process for utterly selfish, egoistic and malicious reasons. He offers not a single credible piece of evidence to prove his laughable and ridiculous allegations against INEC and the credibility of the ongoing process.”
The party criticized Obasanjo for being partisan instead of displaying the highest level of nonpartisanship and elder statesmanship like his colleagues. It condemned the former leader for endorsing the candidacy of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, a choice that crossed the partisan line.
It alleges that the former president is calling for a coup against democracy and the constitution and should be totally condemned.
“What Obasanjo is subtly calling for in his nefarious statement is a coup against democracy and the constitution. He should be roundly condemned and severely ignored,” it said.
Thugs disrupt declaration of collated election results in Plateau
Thugs have invaded the collation centre for the Presidential and National Assembly elections for the Northern Senatorial District of Plateau and disrupted the result collation process.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that thugs invaded the venue on Monday and chased away the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other ad-hoc staff of the commission and halted the process.
Trouble started when the returning officer for the Jos North/Bassa constituency election, Nehemiah Sanda, asked party agents to sign the collated results.
The results indicated that the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Musa Agah, scored the most votes.
The returning officer for the presidential election in Jos North local government area, Lazurus Maigoro, confirmed the incident to NAN.
He explained that the situation had generated serious tension at the collation centre, adding that thugs hindered the announcement of results for the constituency election and that of the senatorial district.
“Yes, it is true that thugs invaded our collation centre while we were doing our job. It is now up to the INEC to know what to do next,” he said. (NAN)
LAPO supports farmers, rural dwellers with N70bn loans in 15 years
The Lift Above Poverty Organisation (LAPO), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), says it disbursed N70 billion in credit facilities to farmers and rural dwellers between 2007 and 2022.
According to Honestus Obadiora, Executive Director of LAPO, the loans were made available to 262,977 farmers through the LAPO Agricultural and Rural Development Initiative (LARDI).
Obadiora, who said this at the annual media forum on Monday in Benin, said that the loans were disbursed to farmers in LAPO’s 303 branches across the 22 states of the federation.
He said that under the LARDI programme, N23.5 billion was disbursed to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers as well as support microbusinesses between January and December 2022.
He expressed delight that the loans had improved the productivity, income, and standard of living of the beneficiaries and contributed to rural agricultural development. (NAN)
Elon Musk recruits team to develop OpenAI’s ChatGPT rival – The Information
Elon Musk has approached AI researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the Information reported on Monday, citing people with direct knowledge of the effort.
Tesla and Twitter chief Musk has been recruiting Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Alphabet’s DeepMind AI unit, the report said.
The report comes after ChatGPT, a text-based chatbot developed by OpenAI that can draft prose, poetry or even computer code on command, gained widespread attention in Silicon Valley.
Musk, who had co-founded OpenAI along with Silicon Valley investor Sam Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit startup, had left its board in 2018, but chimed in with his take on the chatbot, calling it “scary good”.
Musk and Babuschkin have discussed assembling a team to pursue AI research but the project is still in the early stages, with no concrete plan to develop specific products, the report said quoting an interview with the latter. (Reuters)
