Presidential Election: PDP demands resignation of Mahmood Yakubu as INEC chair, asks DSS, IGP to initiate arrest
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has called for the resignation of the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, said the PDP has further reviewed the widely-condemned infractions, a brazen violation of the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 and alleged criminal manipulation and alteration of election results by the chairman of INEC.
Ologunagba alleged that the commission led by Yakubu subverted the will of Nigerians in the February 25, 2023, presidential and National Assembly elections.
He also said that the PDP has reviewed the latest move by INEC to reconfigure the BVAS devices, erase and destroy evidence of its manipulation of the Presidential election, deny Nigerians and political parties access to relevant information required to prosecute cases at the presidential election tribunal.
Ologunagba said: “From all indications, the INEC under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu was compromised to rig the election by brazenly violating the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 as well as INEC’s Regulations, Guidelines and Manual issued for the election.
“It is also obvious that the Commission under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu deliberately sabotaged the uploading and transmission of results directly from the Polling Units to give room for the criminal mutilation, alteration and switching of election results across the nation in favour of the APC as now abundantly exposed in the pictorial and video evidence of compromised results sheets in many parts of the Country.
“Several evidence abounds in States across the six Geo-Political Zones of the Country where winning figures lawfully scored by the PDP were switched in favour of the APC; where results sheet from polling centers won by the PDP were destroyed and replaced with fake results sheets in which APC was allocated unearned winning figures.”
Speaking further, Ologunagba noted that the continued stay of Yakubu in office as chairman of INEC is vexatious, injurious to the integrity of the electoral commission and an unpardonable assault on the credibility of Nigeria’s electoral process, the sensibility of Nigerians and the international community.
The party also called on the Inspector General of Police and the director-general of the State Security Services to immediately commence investigations into the electoral violations and manipulations by INEC. PDP said this should be done with the view to prosecuting Yakubu and other officials of the commission for electoral offences.
