The Lawyers for Peter Obi Campaign have cried foul over the fairness claim by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the forth coming general elections given observations made by some non-governmental organisations in the just concluded preliminary Voters Registeration exercise.
In a release issued by The Lawyers For Peter Obi and signed by the Co-Covener, Kelechukwu Uzoka, the lawyers claimed that their volunteers who participated in the process on November 12, 2022 discovered mind-boggling irregularities capable of marring and distorting the election results.
“About 10% of the voters on the preliminary voters list did not attain the voting age of 18years during registration, thereby not qualified to be a voter as provided by the Electoral Act and our laws,” the statement read.
In a three page memo written by them, the lawyers noted that 1992 voters registered for previous elections for 2011, 2015 and 2019 did not attain the age of 18 at the time of registration in the years preceding the elections. According to them, this act nullifies the current voters list as the law states that if these voters had not attained the age of 18 on or before the day of registration even if they are 18years or above currently, it makes the registration done earlier invalid and to which they added, that the details therefrom should not form part of the voters list.
The lawyers further pointed out other irregularities that were discovered by the independent analysts. They stated that multiple registration, gender misrepresentation among other infractions were observed adding that on some of the issues raised it could be inferred that there was collusion and fragrant disregard of the electoral laws by INEC
The lawyers therefore recommended that INEC should as a matter of priority employ the use of modern technology softwares and Artificial Intelligence to conduct a comprehensive clean-up of the vote register to sieve out these invalid voters.