Crisis: Board of Trustees takes over Labour Party
Kelly Ogbaloi, the Edo State Labour Party chairman, has described the Saturday rerun election in the state as a sham and called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to cancel the election and fix another date for the rerun.
Ogbaloi who stated this while reacting to the rerun election at a press conference in Benin alleged that the exercise was marred by irregularities and violence by thugs suspected to be loyal to the PDP in the state.
He further alleged that members of the Labour Party, including a candidate of the party, Derek Uhunmwagho, were mercilessly beaten up and chased away from the polling units where the rerun election was taking place.
He explained that Labour Party completely dissociate itself from the charade where thugs had taken over the activities of the umpire.
He also alleged that Labour Party was shortchanged by over 2, 000 votes in the last election which INEC had promised to look into and make necessary corrections.
Also reacting to the Edo State rerun election, Labour Party’s national chairman, Julius Abure, in a statement, said reports reaching the national secretariat of the party in Abuja indicated that there was no rerun election in Edo State as agents of PDP were allegedly deployed by the state government to chase away Labour Party’s candidates and supporters from voting in all the affected polling units.
Abure alleged all the polling units in the local government areas where the rerun elections were held were already won by the labour party candidates but because the INEC officials were compromised they decided to cancel them and ordered a rerun.
“We are already challenging the earlier results at the election tribunal and we are very sure of getting a favourable judgement at the tribunal.
“I want to call on our candidates and supporters to remain calm as we believe that justice will be done by the judiciary which is the last hope of the common man,” Abure declared.
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