(By Paul Osuyi)
At least one person was seriously wounded on Thursday when anti-riot policemen fired teargas to disperse supporters of the PDP who were protesting against the result for Oredo council area in Wednesday’s governorship election in Edo State.
The victim fell and hit his head on the tarred Aduwawa Road when the teargas was fired by the heavily armed security operatives that manned the entrance of the headquarters of INEC office in Benin City.
Security had patiently appealed to the protesters to conduct themselves orderly and leave the premises of INEC for over an hour before they fired the teargas canisters.
The protesters had gathered, alleging that the results were overturned by the electoral umpire in favour of the ruling APC, threatening fire and brimstone if the right thing is not done.
Bearing placards with various inscriptions, the protesters made up of mostly women and youths in their numbers called the state governor, Adams Oshiomhole and his APC unprintable names.
Inscriptions on some of the placards were “INEC took bribe from APC, PDP won the 2016 election,’ INEC give us our actual results,’ ‘INEC give PDP their true result’, amongst others.
According to some of them, the PDP won the election in all the eighteen council areas of the state, adding that the state governor Adams Oshiomhole allegedly stormed INEC at the wee hours of Thursday to induce the electoral body to upturn the figures.
One of the protesters Mrs. Lindsay Tes Sorae said the people will not accept the release being released by the electoral umpire, alleging that the governor gave orders to INEC to change the results.
Also, Princess Eba told journalists that they were already in high spirit earlier this morning, noting that there hopes were being dashed as the results were being announced from the various council areas.
“If APC win, they should win squarely, we will have no problem with that. But let them announce the right result of which PDP won in almost all the council areas.
“As at yesterday evening we were already jubilation get because PDP was leading but what we are hearing now is different from the votes that were generated from the polling units.”
Mike Enahoro warned that if INEC did not give Edo people their mandate “we will be forced to go into militancy.”
For his part, Osaro Agbonhiamen insisted that the votes of the people should be allowed to count as they came out en-mass on Wednesday to exercise their franchise.
Mrs. Ehis Julie Atiti said she saw what happened at George Idah Primary School, alleging that some thugs snatched a ballot box at one of the polling unit while INEC staff was beaten to pulp.
Atiti said that “it took the intervention of soldiers to recover the box and the collation centre was transferred from the primary school to Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre. I wonder were all these policemen where when such criminality happened.”
Imade Chukwuma said that the result from Oredo as announced does not tally with the results from all the party agents, adding that “all the agents should be told to come with their collation sheets and recounted to determine the actual valid votes.”
(Source: CHANNELS)