Chairman Peter Obi/Edeoga Campaign Council, for Enugu East senatorial zone, Chief Lucky Chukwu, has expressed fear that the Enugu state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mr. Joseph Chukwuemeka Chukwu, may not be capable of conducting a credible, free and fair election.
Chukwu, the younger brother of the slain Enugu East senatorial candidate for Labour Party (LP), Barr. Oyibo Chukwu, said this while addressing newsmen on Wednesday, in Enugu.
His words, “a lot of undemocratic acts are happening under the Resident Electoral Commission of Mr Joseph Chukwuemeka Chukwu and we don’t have confidence on him conducting free,fair and credible election in Enugu state.”
The LP chieftain who believed that INEC has compromised had this further to say, “the supervisory President Officer (SPOs) as we speak are negotiating on how much they will take for their own corrupt roles in the election.
“Sensitive INEC materials such as thE BVAS is alleged to have been tampered with and made nonfunctional with fake code so that in trying to rectify them outside the ward level, they feed wrong figures in favour of PDP and against the Labour Party.”
Chukwu, flanked by other members of the Chukwu family, Labour Party chieftains, also indicted the ruling party, PDP, accusing it of having concluded arrangement to deploy local thugs into the forest.
“They,’” the PDP, he said, “will deploy thugs to serve as canvassers who will go out and threaten voters to vote only PDP or be shot.
“They intend to disrupt elections in some polling units where the thugs fail to coerce the people to do their bidding by shooting sporadically. They may start this from Friday, and eve of the election to scare away voters.”
He explained that INEC officials intend to come to polling units with photocopies of results sheets so that they will change the original sheets afterwards.
“They have planned to use community leaders loyal to PDP to warn those who may not vote PDP to stay at home just like it happened in Lagos. As we speak His Royal Highness Okechukwu Nwobodo Egbuna is under threat,” he said.
Continuing in his allegation, Chukwu said that most of the INEC ward returning officers, Local Government Returning officers as we as all the State Returning Officers were lecturers and individuals “recruited by PDP, and forwarded to INEC and rectified by the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC).”
Based on the above alleged colluding of the INEC and PDP to rig the March 18 elections in Enugu State, Chukwu therefore called on the security agencies to be at alert to ensure free polls.
“We hereby call on security agencies – the Polices, DSS, EFCC, and ICPC – to investigate the Enugu State Residential Electoral Commissioner.”