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The Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has threatened to occupy the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Port Harcourt, the state capital, over the refusal of the electoral body to grant its request to access some documents used for the just concluded National Assembly election.

The State Publicity Secretary, Darlington Nwauju, said this in a statement in Port Harcourt.

The statement read, “The APC in Rivers State had applied for the Certified True Copies of forms EC8A, EC8B, EC8C and other documents incidental to the recently conducted National Assembly elections in the state in which results were mutilated and or forged in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party in areas where our party clearly won and our candidates should have been declared winners if INEC had kept its promise of uploading results from the polling units to the IReV portal.”

Nwauju however accused the INEC Head of Operations in Rivers State, Mike Odeh, of conniving with the PDP to deny the APC its request, saying his actions was tantamount to give vent to a stolen mandate.

“Instructively, the said Head of Operations against both the civil service rules, INEC guidelines and the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended) has consciously and viciously erected a wall to ensure he frustrates the moves of the APC in Rivers State to retrieve the stolen mandates of our National Assembly candidates.

“By refusing to release the relevant documents earlier listed, which are at the heart of prosecuting our petitions at the Elections Petitions Tribunal knowing too well that election petitions are time bound.

“We hereby issue a 72-hour notice to the INEC headquarters to direct that these documents be released to the APC state chapter, failing which we shall have no other option than to mount a blockade at the state office of INEC in Port Harcourt until our rights are granted as a political party.”