LP Plans Protest Over Electoral Materials Inspection

The Labour Party has vowed to mobilise its supporters to occupy the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission nationwide on Monday if the commission fails to heed the court order allowing its lawyers to inspect the electoral materials used in the February 25 presidential election.

The threat was issued in a statement issued by the Chief Spokesman for Obi-Datti presidential campaign council, Yunusa Tanko, on Saturday.

Controversies have continued to surround the outcome of the presidential election where Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the LP flag bearer, who got 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes respectively.

Dissatisfied by the result, both Obi and Atiku had approached the election tribunal to seek permission to inspect the electoral materials used during the poll.

The development is coming three days after INEC secured a court injunction to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System machines ahead of March 18 governorship and states Assembly elections.

But Tanko believed that the commission was playing a ‘delay’ tactic to frustrate the LP’s efforts at reclaiming his mandate by proving to Nigerians that the election was rigged.

The activist also accused INEC of disobeying the order of the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal to grant Obi and the party access to the certified true copies of materials used in the conduct of the poll.

He said, “It will be recalled that the aforesaid order of the presidential election petition tribunal was duly served on INEC on March 3, 2023, despite the fact that they were present and represented at the tribunal when the Order was made.

“Not minding the service of the said order on INEC, and a reminder letter dated March 6, 2023, and delivered same date at the INEC headquarters in Abuja, the electoral umpire has continued to ignore and disobey the valid order of such magnitude till now.

“The action of INEC under reference also constitutes, for all intent and purposes, an act of judicial insubordination and willful refusal to comply with the order of court. As we speak INEC has chosen to obey the court order given to it to reconfigure the BIVAS machine, which they doing right now and ignoring the order granted to us to inspect electoral materials.

“We therefore want to state that we will not fail to call our supporters to march to INEC offices nationwide in a non-violent protest which is allowed by law.”

He said the only reason that their supporters had not taken to the streets was because they didn’t want to be seen as violent.

He noted, “We are sounding this note of warning. Keeping quiet does not mean we are stupid. If by Monday, they did not give our lawyers access to come for that particular inspection, we are going to direct our members to walk down to INEC offices for a nationwide non-violent protest. This is not a threat.”