Imo Guber: INEC Urged To Declare Ihedioha Winner

The Emeka Ihedioha Campaign Organisation has said available reports
from its field agents across Imo State clearly put its candidate in
the lead and accordingly called on the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) to de-clare him winner of the governorship election
conducted on April 11, 2015.

The organisation, in a statement by its Director-General, Chief Chris
Okewu-lonu, cited several irregularities and malpractices that
bedeviled the election in several strongholds of its candidate and
unfairly increased the chances of the opposition candidate, Rochas
Okorocha of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The statement alleged collusion be-tween the INEC Returning Officer
and the APC in reducing its votes collated and declared at the Oru
East and Ezinihitte Local Government Areas where Ihedioha was posting
an unassailable lead in the election.

Specifically, the Ihedioha Campaign Organisation asked INEC to
"restore the total scores of candidates in the result of Ezinihitte
LGA, as collated at the LGA collation centre and transmitted to the
state INEC headquarters; repudiate, dis-countenance and void the
result of the 4 (four) wards in Oru East LGA, which the Collation
Officer repudiated; and restore the collated result of the outstanding
six wards of Oru East."

According to the statement: "Before the election, we had received
information that Owelle Rochas Okorocha did not want a free and fair
election to hold in the state since it certainly would not be in his
favour, given the revelations to the effect that he had inordinately
appropriated large chunks of the state's resources for himself and
members of his family while salaries and emoluments of workers, etc.
remained unattended to.

"We also received information that to forestall his failure at the
polls, Rochas Okorocha and his apparatchik were plan-ning to use
thugs, some in police and military uniforms, to rig and/or disrupt the
electoral process in selected areas. We duly shared this information
with the relevant authorities. Unfortunately, the information was not
given the attention it deserved," the organisation said.
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