THOUSANDS OF ABIA STATE YOUTHS TAKE TO THE STREETS TO PROTEST AGAINST PDP RIGGING IN ABIA STATE

Thousands of Abia youths trooped out to the streets of Umuahia on Tuesday in a peaceful protest organised to register their dissatisfaction with the results of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections in the state.

The youths, who marched through the streets of the town to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) office, said that the results were not the true reflection of the voting pattern at the polls.

Chanting anti-corruption songs, they decried the manipulation of the results by the PDP-led administration, saying that the party used the Local Government Transition Committee and some unscrupulous INEC officials to rig the results.

They said that the results at the polling units showed that the All Progressives Grand Alliance ‘’massively’’ won the polls at all levels across the state.

Addressing newsmen, the leader of the group, Mr Johnson Ndukwe, alleged that the results of the presidential and National Assembly polls were manipulated at the collation centres in the local government council headquarters.

‘’There were a lot of irregularities in the result sheets yet INEC accepted the results,’’ Ndukwe said.

He said that ‘’we are angry because we know who we voted for in our respective communities but our votes were manipulated,’’ he said.

Also speaking, Mr Nkem Nwosu, said that ‘’all we are asking for is that our votes should count and the results from the polling units should be sacrosanct.

‘’We want the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Prof. Selina Oko, to rise to the challenge and correct this anomaly,’’ Nwosu said.

The protesters said that they voted for change, saying that ‘’Abia youths have suffered so much and we need a change.

Some of the placards bore ‘’No more rigging,’’ ‘’Jega please save Abia,’’ ‘’INEC please restore our mandate,’’ among others.

In a related development, the Abia North senatorial candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Dr. David Onuoha, also cried out against what he called  ‘’massive fraud’’ in the results from the collation centres in the area.

Onuoha said that ‘’the results collated from the polling units and wards were tampered with at the local government headquarters.’’

He said that his petition to the REC led to the constitution of a committee to review the results from the zone.

He said that the review, which started on Monday, revealed massive fraud but regretted that the process, which ought to continue on Tuesday, was abruptly stopped, following an alleged counter directive from Abuja.

Onuoha regretted that the Transition Committee Chairmen in the five local government areas in the district, used security agents to shut out agents of the opposition parties from the collation centres.

opinionriver