The New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) has called for the immediate suspension of the announcement of result and the cancellation of the presidential election across the country, demanding that new election be conducted as soon as possible.
NNPP is one of the four leading parties in the 2023 election and it has the fourth highest votes in the results announced so far. Two other parties with the second and third highest votes so far, Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party respectively, had earlier called for the cancellation of the election.
Briefing the press in Abuja on Tuesday on the February 25 Elections, the National Chairman of the Party, Prof Rufai Ahmed Alkali said its members were disenfranchised by the electoral body because of the logo used on the ballot paper which was neither clear enough nor contained the key representation of the party, which is a basket of fruits, thereby confusing its voters as they made their choices.
The party said: “The deliberate use of illegible logo of our party on the ballot papers of the 2023 general elections by INEC is very unfortunate. We were shocked on the Election Day to discover that INEC has decided to make use of the most blurred image to represent the logo of NNPP. It is even more shocking that the blurred image that INEC has put on the ballot did not include the name of our party.”
Alkali noted that “This is in spite of the provision of section 42 (1) which states “…the commission shall prescribe the format of the ballot papers which shall include the symbol adopted by the political party of the candidate and such other information as it may require”. Majority of our supporters found it difficult to identity NNPP on the ballot paper”.
“The key representation of the NNPP logo is the basket of fruits. But on the INEC ballot papers neither the basket nor the fruits can be identified. This did not only confuse our supporters but deliberately disenfranchised them.”
It said: “There was a deliberate undermining of the NNPP by INEC from the beginning of the 2023 electioneering process, INEC as a Commission has been displaying incomprehensible hostility towards the NNPP.”
“From the conduct of our congresses and conventions to the conduct of our primary elections we suffered unnecessary and unexplainable resistance and outright sabotage from INEC both at state and national levels. The most disturbing one was when INEC shut our party from submitting our candidates onto their server days before the deadline. We had to go to court and secure judgement to compel INEC to accept our Candidates.”
“As if that was not enough, even after the court judgement, INEC went ahead to appeal some of the judgments. And to the best of our knowledge, we are the only political party that INEC has been appealing pre-election cases that we have won in courts. The most shameful of all is the refusal of INEC to use the correct and legible logo of our party on the ballot papers.”
The party stressed that “While it is illegal to campaign on election day according to the provisions of the electoral act, the President of Nigeria Maj. Gen. M. Buhari (rtd.) and the Minister of Justice Barr A Malami and many senior members of the government were seen on election day campaigning openly by displaying their ballot papers, showing Nigerians which party should be voted for.“
“It is unfortunate that the distribution of election materials was deliberately delayed in many polling units to suppress our voters. This is Rigging by Time. In many places elections started few minutes to the closing time of 2:30pm. Law enforcement personnel especially some Police and DSS were openly seen colluding with the agents of the ruling party and elections officials not only to cause delays in the process but also to harass and intimidate voters in places were the ruling party is very unpopular.”
Speaking on vote buying, the party insisted that “In spite of the Naira swap policy which the government claimed was intended to end the culture of vote-buying, there is no gainsaying that the 2023 general election was among the worse in terms of vote-buying.”
“While the volume of cash being used to bribe voters has reduced, the quantum of other truckloads of essential commodities that was used openly, at polling units, to bribe voters was unprecedented in the history of elections in Nigeria. In almost every electoral ward in the country, merchants of corruption and bribe were in their elements! Truckloads of raw food items, truckloads of fabrics, truckloads of toiletries etc. were seen everywhere and being used shamelessly by the ruling party to bribe voters and compromise the election. In many places this dastardly act was being protected by some law enforcement agents.”
Furthermore, NNPP stated that “The embarrassing decision of INEC to close down the iReV server might not be unconnected with the very widespread failures of the bvas across the country. In majority of the PUs across rural Nigeria, the BVAS machine failed. It simply did not work. There was no any accreditation. And people were allowed to vote.”
“Nothing compromised the election and returned us to pre-technology era than the shelving of BVAS and allowing election to hold without accreditation. And in those places, ballot boxes were simply stuffed with ballot papers of a particular party to the detriment and disadvantage of other parties. No over-voting is worse that voting without accreditation at all.”
“In fact in the few places were the bvas machine worked, the attempt to change the results on transit has also rubbished the accreditation as the record on the bvas is entirely different with the tampered results on the results sheet”
It said, “to save our democracy and our country, the present election results must not be accepted by Nigerians and by all friends of Nigeria.”
