Again Witness Testifies Against Okowa At Delta Tribunal

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A witness from the Labour Party, Ochuko Alagba testified on Tuesday, September 8, before the Delta state election petitions tribunal sitting in Asaba, that he was compelled to sign election results from his ward.

The Party and its gubernatorial candidate, Chief Great Ogboru are before the Delta tribunal challenging the declaration of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of the PDP by Independent National Electoral Commission as the winner of the April 11 poll.

Describing it as fictitious, Alagba who is the vice chairman of the party in Oshimili South local government area insisted that the election results obtained in Ward 2 were falsified by agents of the PDP, Daily Post reports.

He said: “I am the Collation officer for the Labour Party in Oshimili South. On the election day, results were falsified by agents of the PDP from the polling units and sent straight to the local government collation centre.

“At a polling unit in ward 2, some PDP agents and fierce-looking thugs chased my agents away and when I learnt about it, I went down to the polling unit, but was prevented from going into the voting centre.

“After the elections, I wrote a protest letter to INEC where I stated my observation that there was non-compliance to electoral rules in elections in my ward.

“I also made it known to them that results obtained from the wards, which were sent to the local government were falsified and never the true results of voting in polling units across the ward. What took place was adding up of fictitious results, there were not the true results of elections in the ward.”

Alagba further noted that after what happened at the various polling units, he declined to sign the results sheet but the local government electoral officer then threatened not to grant him a copy of the results if he failed to sign the results sheet

“As a result, I had to sign the results sheet under duress because I needed to have a copy to present to my party,” he said.

The vice chairman explained that he immediately wrote a petition to the state INEC office after signing the sheets.

He further claimed that on the voting day, many people whose names were not on the voters register were allowed to vote at some polling units in the ward.

A week ago, the accreditation report submitted by the INEC to the Delta tribunal had shown that the number of accredited voters for the election in the state was lower than the results announced by electoral officials after the polls.