KINGSLEY Moghalu, the Presidential Candidate of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) in the just concluded-presidential election has rejected the result announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
In a statement issued on Friday, Moghalu, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, complained that the number of votes recorded for him by INEC was nowhere near what he actually scored on the day of the election, adding that his voters were suppressed and his votes stolen.
Final results of the election showed that Moghalu scored a total of 21,886 votes, a number he disagrees with.
“The number of votes tallied for my candidacy by the INEC did not represent anything close to the electoral strength of that candidacy. These false numbers were the result of brazen theft of our votes and the suppression of our voters,” Moghalu stated.
“It appears, however, that the strong determination of many of our citizens to reject the APC at the ballot box far outweighed the desire for real change in our polity and governance in 2019. So, although we did not win this election in terms of overall numbers of votes, the presidential election result is an indication of where our society is at present.”
Moghalu called for urgent reforms in Nigeria’s electoral process to make the process less cumbersome and more transparent and also to ensure that Nigerians in the diaspora were not prevented from voting.
“Elections, as they are organised and executed today in Nigeria, are a travesty,” he said.
“As of today, these processes are tedious, inefficient and prone to risks and performance failures such as those we have experienced. We can make the processes more transparent through better use of technology. We also must stiffen punishment and enforce accountability for electoral offences.
“Nigerians in Diaspora have continued to remit billions of dollars home every year. Our fellow citizens living abroad must be able to vote overseas as from 2023. Immediate action to achieve this goal is required once the present elections are over.”
Moghalu also urged President Buhari, who has been declared the winner of the election, to adopt a different strategy in combating poverty, not the current “APC government’s unsustainable populist initiatives that fail to create jobs or improve actual economic productivity and living standards.
“A new, philosophically and conceptually grounded approach to economic management that goes beyond mere economic growth statistics to real economic development and structural transformation remains an urgent priority for our country,” he stated.