Ondo Poll: INEC, APC collaborated to rig — Mimiko

Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State on Saturday accused the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC of collaborating with the All Progressives Congress APC, to rig the election in favour of the APC.

Mimiko said the card reader machines provided by INEC all malfunctioned in most polling units. He also cited cases of inducement of voters by the APC and other parties that participated in the election.

Mimiko whose fingerprint was rejected by the card reader machine, later voted at Unit 20 Ward 07 in the Ondo West Local Government Area of the state around 11.30am. This was after he filled the incident form given to him by INEC officials at the polling unit.

In the governor’s words: “What is happening in Ondo State presently is anarchy. The INEC and APC are trying to rig the poll with the use of malfunctioning card readers and inducement of voters.

“The result I am getting all round the state shows that INEC is not for a free and fair election. Imagine with different calls we made to postpone this election, they refused and went ahead. Now that our people have made up their mind to vote for us, they decided to rig with the use of malfunctioning card readers and giving money to people in order to get votes.

“This time around, we shall resist them. We will stand firm and defend our votes. I enjoin all our people to be vigilant and defend their votes especially at the collation centres. We were told that they have fake result sheets. So, if the result at the polling units do not tally with the one at collation centres, we will resist it.”

As at the time of filing this report, INEC had collated and announced 17 local governments results with just one more to go. So far, the APC has one 14, the PDP has two and the AD has one.