There was drama at the International Conference Centre (ICC) Abuja, the National Collation Centre for the presidential election, yesterday, as no fewer than nine political parties staged a walkout.

The opposition parties led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hinged their action on what they described as connivance between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to rig the presidential election.

The protesting parties had demanded that the electoral umpire uploaded the polling units results into the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) to authenticate the presented results.

Despite appeals from the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, to the parties to allow the process continue, the opposition party agents insisted on rejecting the results and continuation of the process.

Trouble started before the beginning of collation when Melaye, agent of the PDP, raised an observation that the figures of results announced by INEC for Ekiti State did not add up.

INEC had declared the presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu winner with 201,494 while Abubakar Atiku of the PDP  89, 554.

Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) polled 11,397 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) scored 264 votes; 1703 votes were cancelled due to bye-pass of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation Systems and over-voting.

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But in his observation, Melaye said after calculation done by the PDP, there was a discrepancy of an increase of 887 in the figures from Ekiti State.

Agents of the Action Alliance (AA), Kenneth Udeze and Umar Farouk of LP agreed with his observation.

But INEC, chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, insisted that the commission stood by the result declared by the collation officer of Ekiti State, Prof. Akeem Olawale Lasisi, Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila Orangun, Osun State.

“I still insist that the figure presented by the state collection officer for the presidential election for Ekiti state of the total number of accredited voters is 315,058. This is what is on the spreadsheet that we screened yesterday. And this is also what is on the actual result manual recorded by the scope and signed by the PDP agent and agents of other political parties back in Ekiti state.

“But having said that, I’ve taken note of your observations, let us make progress on that one. But what we have here is exactly what I’ve said. And any other figure that is at variance with this one cannot supersede the official result presented. Let’s make progress.”

But Melaye was insistent and almost stalled the collation of Kwara State’s result. Despite appeals from INEC chairman to the parties to allow the process continue, the opposition party agents insisted on rejecting the results and continuation of the process.

Ignoring the appeals at the resumption of the second session of the presentation, the opposition parties insisted that they cannot be party to the fraud cooked by the ruling party and endorsed by the commission.

Speaking on behalf of the parties, Dino Melaye told newsmen: “What we are doing is to put the authenticity and veracity of the results into test otherwise we are only here to endorse the fraud that has been done from the units, wards, to the stated.

“We are going to prove that we are not here to rubber stamp what has been done. We have no other country to call our own and we are going to do everything humanly possible to ensure that the right thing is done.

“We will not allow this having suffered hunger, pain, kidnapping, poverty, killing we will not allow continuation of failure in this country. We must ensure that the right thing is done. But the INEC chairman is putting his integrity on test.

“Nigerians are watching; the world is watching and even the dead are watching to see what INEC will do. But the battle to ensure that only the authentic results will be announced today is a battle of no retreat no surrender,” Melaye warned.

However, at the resumption of the third session, nine political parties comprising SDP, PRP, YPP, NRM, A, AA, NNPP, BP, APC, disassociated themselves from the parties that staged the walkout.

•APC leads

Meanwhile, INEC has announced results of 10 states with the APC clearing Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Kwara states, while PDP won Osun, Yobe, Gombe. The LP recorded an upset in Lagos, cleared Enugu and was leading in Delta State at press time.

In Kwara, the APC scored 263,572 votes while PDP and LP polled 136,209 and 31,166 votes respectively.

The PDP and APC polled 354,366 and 369,924 votes respectively to win Osun and Ondo states. The LP scored 23,383 votes in Osun and 44,405 votes in Ondo state.

The PDP scored 198, 567 votes to win Yobe State while the APC, NNPP and LP trailed with 151, 459, 10,270 and 2,406 respectively.

In Ogun, the APC polled 341,554 votes, PDP got 123,831 votes while LP got 85, 829. In Enugu, LP polled 428,640 votes to emerge winner, while PDP scored 15,749 votes and APC got 4772.

The ruling party was also in pole position to clinch Benue and Rivers states last night.

PDP won in Gombe, an APC controlled state, with 319,123 votes. The ruling party scored 146,977 votes while LP trailed with 26, 160 votes ahead of NNPP which got 10,520 votes.

SUN