Contrary to assurances given by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that its deployment of electronic technology would assure the integrity of the 2023 General Elections, the Labour Party says results being announced were manually collated and their authenticity remains doubtful.

National Chairman of the Labour Party, Julius Abure said this on Sunday, February 26, 2023 during a live television show monitored by Kristina Reports.

“The result being announced from the presidential elections were manually collated, this is because INEC servers have been down since yesterday.”

“We checked again about three hours ago and the servers were still down making difficult to upload results electronically.”

“In all the meetings and sessions we had with INEC they gave all assurances that this would not happen; that where there’s any challenge they have backup systems to take care of the situation. But that is not what has happened.”

He disclosed that in some parts of the country, Labour Party was not on the ballot, saying that Edo State was one of the States where Labour Party logo was not on the ballot, regretting that the processes involved in the conduct of the presidential election fell below standards.

There have been widespread complaints across the country over the conduct of the presidential, senatorial and House of Representatives elections on Saturday, February 25, 2023, with reports of voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, violence and vote buying in several states including Lagos, Rivers, and Kaduna, among others.

Earlier on Sunday, February 26, 2023, Abure had called for the outright cancellation of the elections in Rivers State, especially, in “Obio/Akpor, Khana, Eleme, Obigbo, Rumukoro and several other areas where Labour Party was clearly leading in virtually all the polling units with very wide margins”.

INEC was yet to respond to these complaints as at the time of this report, though it declared its national collation centre open earlier on Sunday, February 26, 2023 with the presidential election results from Ekiti State announced.