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Political parties have begun compiling evidence of rigging for use in courts following last Saturday’s parliamentary election.

At a meeting of the National Executive Councils of
the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive
Change (CPC), held in Abuja yesterday, the parties examined evidence so
far gathered from the irregularities in the elections. Most of the
documents and video material came from the northern part of the
country. One of such evidence, allegedly obtained from a polling unit
in a secondary school in Kebbi State, was the abandoned stub of used
voting sheets which was supposed to be returned to the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC). “It was all thumb printed for the
PDP by minors,” said a source who was at the meeting. “You could see
how tiny their prints are.” NEXT has reported cases of minors voting in
such northern states like Kaduna and Katsina. In River State, where the
ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) swept the polls, the ACN chairman
in the state, Uche Okwukwu said: “There were no results sheets in many
areas of the state such as Khana, Degema, Gokana, Tai, Oyigbo,
Obio/Akpor, Opobo/Nkoro, Onelga, and Andoni.” Although Muhammadu
Buhari, the presidential candidate of the CPC, has repeatedly said that
he will not go to court if he loses election, the other candidates of
the party are under no such compulsion. Otonye Briggs, who is the CPC
governorship candidate in River State, said his party was denied
opportunity to fully participate in the elections and would therefore
be seeking redress in court. Mohammed Dele Belgore, the Kwara State
governorship candidate of ACN, who led a protest rally rejecting the
results of last week’s election in the state, had vowed that: “We will
restore this mandate through the legal means.”