Nigerian actor cum politician, Kenneth Okonkwo has reacted to a video of Festus Okoye during an interview after he could not explain what caused the glitch that stopped the upload of presidential election result on IREV portal.
The spokesperson of the Labour Party Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of deliberately manipulating the outcome of the 2023 presidential election.
According to Okonkwo, it is unfortunate that INEC is trivializing its inability to transmit, transfer or upload the results of the 2023 presidential election to its IREV portal and server.
The Labour Party (LP) chieftain made the submission while reacting to the words of INEC spokesperson, Festus Okoye during a Channels TV interview on Thursday night in which he stated that Nigerians should not judge the commission’s performance in the 2023 polls simply based on the challenge experienced in the upload of the presidential election results to its viewing portal.
Okoye added during the interview that political parties contesting the outcome of the election should not only rely on electronically uploaded results as they all had agents at the various polling units who supervised the process.
However, Okonkwo vehemently disagreed with the submissions of Okoye, stating that the views of the INEC spokesperson fall below expectations and confirm a deliberate attempt to manipulate the 2023 presidential election results.
He said: “I just finished watching Festus Okoye, INEC Commissioner for voter education, on Politics Today, Channels TV, 29th June 2023, at 7pm, and the interview has reinforced the long-held conclusion that INEC manipulated the election to declare their preferred candidate in the presidential election.
“Firstly Lawyers are called “Learned” because they understand little of every discipline and researches where to get the answers to every question. This is why they can defend Doctors, Engineers, Scientists etc in court.
“It was nauseating that till date, four months after the presidential election, the “Learned” Festus Okoye confessed on public TV that he doesn’t know what caused the non-transmission or transfer or non-uploading of the presidential election results on IREV Portal and the Server because it was technical.
“Meanwhile, the same Okoye, who has not been in the Presidential Election Petition Court, claimed that he knew what was going on in Court, while he doesn’t know what went wrong with transmission of results even when he was present in the situation room. Isn’t it a shame that Okoye admitted they couldn’t transmit the presidential results but was calling the failure as “only” presidential election.
“This election that was the most important election is referred to as “only” by the failed INEC. He claimed that INEC supplied all documents and obeyed all subpoenas by the court, which was a lie.
“INEC even openly told the court that some of the documents were not in existence. INEC even refused to accept the subpoena from a court Baliff to foist on the Petitioners a faith accompli.
“It’s unfortunate that in addition to the failure of INEC to do its duties in accordance with the law, Festus Okoye is lying on top of it. Okoye revealed that Adamawa REC may soon be charged to court, but till date nobody has been held responsible for not transmitting and uploading presidential results.
“With incompetent and dishonest people like this in INEC, it will be difficult for us to make progress in Nigeria. If Adamawa REC is a demon, INEC leadership in Abuja are Devils.”
