Don’t give Uba Certificate of Return, ex-NCC boss tells INEC

Candidate of All Progressive s Grand Alliance (APGA) for Anambra South Senatori­al District in the just con­cluded National Assembly election, Dr. Ernest Nduk­we, has advised the Inde­pendent National Elec­toral Commission (INEC) not to issue Certificate of Return to Senator Andy Uba, who he alleged was wrongly declared the win­ner of the March 28 poll.

Ndukwe, former vice chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commis­sion (NCC), alleged that the election was character­ized by monumental results manipulation and electoral violence.

Addressing a world press conference at his Oraiifite residence in Ekwusigo Lo­cal Government Area of Anambra State yesterday, Ndukwe insisted that he won the contentious Na­tional Assembly poll with enough evidence on ground to prove his claims.

He said he had petitioned the INEC to complain the ‘monumental irregulari­ties’ that characterized the election “in which Uba was wrongly declared the win­ner.” The former NCC boss alleged that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwarts stormed the voting  and collating centres with thugs, police and the army during the exercise and in­duced both INEC officials and ad-hoc staff to manipu­late and influence the au­thentic results to favour the PDP candidate.

Dr. Ndukwe noted that the perpetrators of the al­leged rigging capitalized on the fact that voting was con­cluded late on election day because of the failure of the card readers which even­tually led to late collation that lasted over the night as there was no steady elec­tricity supply to use for the collation. He further alleged that the results of the elec­tion were announced even when results were still com­ing in from some remaining council areas in the senato­rial zone.