The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has urged members of the public to disregard the allegation that it created fictitious polling units in Osun ahead of the Saturday governorship election in the state.
The Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi made the call on Friday in Abuja.
Oyekanmi stated this while reacting to an allegation by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the commission created illegal polling units in Osun.
He described the allegation as baseless and false alarm.
“The Commission hereby urges the general public, especially the good people of Osun state to disregard the baseless allegations and false alarm made and raised by the PDP.
“The Commission also wishes to reiterate its determination to ensure that only the votes of the Osun state people, as would be freely expressed in Saturday’s governorship election, will determine who becomes the next governor of the state,” Oyekanmi said.
The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan had accused INEC of creating illegal polling units in Osun to rig the Saturday’s election for the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Ologbondiyan at a news conference in Abuja on Friday said that the PDP had alerted Nigerians that the APC in a connivance with INEC was creating illegal polling units and delineating illegal wards across the federation.
“It will interest you to know that just as we are preparing for the Osun election, we have been able to burst one of those fictitious electoral wards created for APC to rig election.
“Ila Local Government has 11 electoral wards, but ahead of tomorrow’s election, INEC has created an imaginary 12 wards for Ila and allocated over 4,000 votes for that ward, and that ward is called Iperin.
“What they have done is to create two wards in Iperin, instead of one; allocated votes for both wards including the original ward and the fictitious ward.”
Ologbondiyan said that ordinarily, if INEC was delineating constituency, where two or three wards shares name, they would give it numeral figures; “like this Iperin, would have been Iperin 1 and Iperin 2, but what we have in this situation is Iperin, Iperin.
“Whereas INEC recognised 11 wards in that local government. What we have had now is 11 wards
“And to also showcase the fact that this is a deliberate plot, we discovered that the figures allocated to the two Iperin wards are different , one has over 4,000 votes, the other has over 2,000 votes.
“In all, where they would have had 2,000 votes, they want to generate 6,000 votes. We are not yet aware of the number of local government where this is currently happening.”
Ologbondiyan demanded that INEC should make an outright withdraw of “fictitious electoral wards from its database.”
“We have also directed our members to continue to monitor the devious plans of APC and INEC during Osun election.
“The PDP will not accept any result that come from Iperin if INEC insist on allowing votes in the two Iperin wards.”
Ologbondiyan said that the PDP was determined in the Osun election to dismantle all the rigging plans and all the rigging plots ahead of the 2019 general elections.
“Our men are on the street of the entire Osun and we are also collaborating with Civil Society Organisations, who were determined to ensure a clean, clear, free electioneering process,” he said.
