By Adadareporters
Wednesday’s campaign rally of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Mr Peter Obi, to drum support for LP’s candidate in the rerun election for Udenu/Igboeze North Federal Constituency will not translate to victory.
Our correspondent reports that Obi enjoyed mammoth crowd from Nsukka en route to Igboeze North through Obollo-Afor down to Orba in his efforts to galvanize support for LP’s Dennis Agbo whose election into the House of Representatives was nullified because the Independent National Electoral Commission omitted the logo of the All Progressives Congress in the result sheet. The nullification followed a petition filed by APC’s candidate, Dr Oby Aji.
Aside Aji, Agbo is being challenged by Mr Simon Atigwe of the Peoples Democratic Party, who is trailing Agbo by about 12, 000 votes. However, the rerun will only affect about 166 polling units where the APC logo was omitted. The federal constituency has over 500 polling units.
The assertion that Obi’s visit would not translate to victory was made by a former Enugu State chairman of APC, Dr Ben Nwoye, on Wednesday in Enugu.
According to him, “Obi’s coming will not translate to victory. It will amount to a social gathering. He won’t get to the real villages where the actual voting will take place. So the main voters won’t feel his impact. Obi also campaigned in Imo guber election, and the LP candidate failed. Again, the PDP has more structures in the area, with all the councillors, local government chairmen, and the state governor. APC will also enjoy the goodwill of many, including women.
“Again, Agbo’s about 12, 000 votes lead has reduced because his votes in the affected 166 polling units were also nullified, so anybody could emerge victorious.”
Nwoye also charged INEC to up its game to avoid the repeat of what led to the nullification of the last election which was won by LP’s Dennis Agbo.
According to him, “It’s INEC’s failure to include the results of the APC in the result sheets in the affected polling units that led to the nullification of the election of Agbo. INEC had claimed it was a printer’s error. It’s failure to do the needful caused enormous losses both for the contestants and taxpayers.
“How are we sure INEC won’t commit the same blunder again? Has INEC done the necessary checks this time around? INEC claims it prints result sheets outside the country. Don’t they have quality checks to have detected the omission for almost four years that they planned the failed one, leading to the rerun?
“INEC claims it is now ready, but don’t be surprised that glitches will come in during the exercise. Nobody trusts INEC. That is why party agents will be monitoring election materials from the Central Bank to police stations and to INEC office to ensure that untowards things don’t happen.”
Meanwhile, LP’s Agbo has expressed optimism of winning in the rerun. According to him, he had performed very well in the few months he served in the House, adding that ‘the disputed polling units are where APC scored zero votes’, but blamed INEC for not recording the results.
Yesterday’s rally for Agbo also featured the Enugu State governorship candidate of LP during the 2023 general elections, Chief Chijioke Edeoga, and the senator representing Enugu North in the Senate, Barr Okey Ezea.
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