Akin Osuntokun, Director General of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, has urged for the immediate resignation and prosecution of Prof Mahmood Yakubu, National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, for his role in the 2023 presidential elections.
Akin Osuntokun
Osuntokun also urged that the commission conduct a forensic financial examination of all expenditures and donations received before to, during, and after the elections. The campaign director made the statement at the party’s campaign headquarters in Abuja on Thursday during an international press conference. “We demand unequivocally Prof Mahmud Yakubu’s immediate dismissal from office and prosecution, as well as the launch of a forensic financial investigation into the expenditure of budgeted disbursements and donor funds received by INEC.”
“This is in addition to the N300 billion appropriated from the national purse, as well as other funds and materials received from international donor agencies,” he explained. The development comes just five months after the commission declared the All Progressives Congress candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as the winner of the February 25 poll. Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes, defeating the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi, who received 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.
Atiku and Obi, on the other hand, rejected the results, stating in separate press conferences that the election was marred by violence and huge rigging. In response to the court action, Osuntokun told reporters on Thursday that every evidence provided by both the PDP and the LP verified their earlier suspicions that the election was plagued by anomalies. While urging punitive measures against INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, and other top administrative and field staff for their alleged complicity, he also warned against further intimidation of the European Union and other election observers over their reports on the poll.
“The Labour Party and the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Organisation vehemently condemn the negative and jaundiced responses on the EU Report and other Election Observers’ reports, by the APC administration’s spokesperson and other ill-informed persons, which are completely at odds with the mood of the nation at this time, and which also present an embarrassing contrast, to their selective celebration of the 2019 Election reports, from these same Observer groups.” “It is now only logical, as supported by the final Observer Group reports, for the International Community to take immediate and appropriate punitive action against Prof Mahmud Yakubu, Barrister Festus Okoye, and other top administrative and field staff of INEC who were directly complicit in the desecration of these elections.”
Source: The PUNCH
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