Imo LG Polls: Political parties threaten to boycott election, allege ISIEC rigging plot

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Imo LG Polls: Political parties threaten to boycott election, allege ISIEC rigging plot

Over 15 political parties in Imo State under the aegis of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC have threatened to boycott the scheduled September 21 LGA exercise across the 27 Local Councils in the State coming up this Saturday.

Arising from a meeting in Owerri, IPAC urged the Imo State Independent Electoral Commission, ISIEC, to stop playing to the gallery and do the right thing by abiding by the guidelines as enshrined in the Electoral Act for the conduct of Council Elections.

Interacting with Journalists after the meeting, the IPAC State chairman, Ichie Levi Ekeh said political parties are not satisfied with ISIEC for not properly following the electoral guidelines, an act he described as an anomaly that undermines democratic tenets and the rule of law.

“We are not happy with how ISIEC is going about the LG polls. Recent trends of events have shown that the whole exercise is a charade in the sense that the election guidelines have not been followed at all,” he said.

The IPAC Chairman said before now, ISIEC had promised that forms would be issued to candidates where their details would be obtained and a validation exercise would take place, 20 days before the elections.

He said, however, that the Commission did not keep to the guidelines noting that the act demonstrates what he described as planned rigging and irregularities in the Saturday elections.

“IPAC is law-abiding and hence will not want to be part of this impunity being displayed by ISIEC. We want things to be done rightly. ISIEC should sit up and do what is right if it wants us to be part of the LG elections,” Ekeh maintained.

He observed that up to the moment, Ad-hoc staff for the elections have not been listed, a situation he described as an aberration, cautioning the Commission for taking huge sums of money from candidates for validation forms.