Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo state has accused the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) Imo State, Professor Francis Chukwuemeka Ezeonu of wrecking democracy in the state over “the worrisome manner he has handled the conduct of the 2019 elections in the state.”
Okorocha said that Ezeonu has shown that he was brought to Imo after the 2015 elections to return Peoples Democratic party (PDP) to power in the state.
The governor, who spoke when some youths in the state protest the outcome of the 2019 governorship elections on Wednesday, said the REC had acted illegally by ignoring the provision of the constitution that makes it mandatory for a candidate to have 25 percent spread in at least two-third of the local governments in the state by announcing the PDP candidate, Emeka Ihedioha who only met the requirement in 9 local governments instead of 18 LGAs out of 27 LGAs in the state as winner.
The governor also wondered why the REC should accept the outrageous figures from the three local governments of Mbaise including Aboh Mbaise where the PDP Candidate had 64,219 votes.
He said that the figures from the three LGAs in Mbaise constituted 50 percent of the total votes got by the PDP candidate in the state with 27 local government areas.
The governor insisted that Uche Nwosu, the governorship candidate of Action Alliance (AA) won the election and has the required spread by having 25% in 21 out of the 27 LGAs in the state.
He accused the REC of working to set the state on fire.
The governor also regretted that the REC has become a willing tool in the hands of those fighting him.
He said, “I say so because coming by the actual calculation, the person that won this election is Ugwumba Uche Nwosu.
“Uche Nwosu won the election landslide, if you remove the manipulation results from Mbaise, Uche Nwosu won with over 50,000 votes. If you cannot declare him a winner because you have someone already, then they should go for a rerun because you cannot change the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because you want to favour a candidate.
“In the course of this manipulation, we all observed that the REC decided not use the collation officers from Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), which he disbanded for reasons he gave that they have met with politicians.
“Again, he brought some people whom he introduced from the University of Agriculture, Umudike. They arrived just a night before the election date and we thought we have gotten the collation officers.
“Again, those ones were disbanded on the same reason that they have met with politicians, I wonder how this is possible having arrived the state past midnight on the election eve.
“Now, the REC went to his own University in Awka to bring in collation officers. We believed him not knowing that he brought people he has been training for a hatched job for some weeks now in Anambra state to come and carry out this injustice in Imo state.
“These men arrived with heavy security from Anambra and went straight to the various local governments. We never knew that these were relatives of the PDP candidate and from the same local government.
“These are relatives of the PDP candidate who were already briefed on what to do. This explains the over voting witnessed in Mbaise. Out of the 270,000 votes that he scored, 50% of it or over 130,000 all came from just three local governments of Mbaise”, he stated.
