All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) governorship candidate, Dr. Alex Otti, has declared that the party is ready for Saturday’s polls but expressed grave concerns that the State Government is doing everything possible to rig the polls and make the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to carry the day.

Said Otti during a press briefing yesterday in Umuahia: “The major concern we have has to do with intelligence information that we have received that the present government under the leadership of Chief Theodore Orji, wants to do everything possible to ensure that this election is not credible and transparent.

“We have heard of hoodlums and thugs being imported into Abia State, a lot of them are in Aba, some are in Umuahia; we have heard about plans to compromise the entire INEC system, we have heard about transition committee chairmen who have been given mandate to ensure that the elections are manipulated in their different local governments.

“You all, if you are in Abia State, would have heard about the removal of four transition council chairmen of Aba North and Aba South, Umuahia South and Umuahia North and I believe a few deputies too. We understand that the major reason why this action was taken, in spite of whatever they government said, as that they failed to rig the election in their favour on March 28 and their replacements are going to go with the mandate that they deliver their local governments.

“In the ordinary course of things, you would not think that the transition council chairmen should interfere in the electoral process. These are appointed people by the government and they shouldn’t have any business but we have cried out before now and we want to use this opportunity to cry our again to the security forces to ensure that the transition chairmen are kept out of collation centres because they do not have any business with the collation centres.

“What happened on the 28th of March was an eye opener where transition council chairmen were used to carry ballot boxes, they were used to manipulate the collation process and they were used to deliver fake results and I think INEC needs to draw its attention to this because it is a manipulation of the process when people who are not supposed to be in the collation room are in the collation room.

“We are also aware that the PDP has met with Assistant Presiding Officers (APOs) and the whole purpose is to manipulate the card reader. They have been induced to manipulate the card reader so that the card readers will fail on the election day and the APOs will be forced to resort to manual accreditation.

“We are also aware that photocopies of incident forms are being made illegally for use for this election in case of a resort to manual accreditation. We are also aware that the card readers can be manipulated to fail and it is only when system administrators get there that they can put them right.

“We are also aware that fake tags have been made for APGA agents and the whole idea is to hang tags on them and they will pose as APGA agents and security agencies would be used to prevent genuine APGA agents from gaining entry to collation centres both at the wards and at the local governments.

“We are also very much aware that a meeting was held with the Heads of Service of all the 17 local governments and intelligence information has it that they are going to be the ones that would do the collations for the local governments. What that means is that the people who are appointed as collation officers would not show up and these HOS would be used.

“I think all these are a manipulation of an election that is yet to come and if the election has already been manipulated before the election came, then your guess will be as good as mine as to what the outcome will be.

“So we are using this opportunity to call upon INEC to review its process, look at its people and ensure that it is only credible people that they use in these elections.

“I just hope that INEC will wake up to its responsibilities and I hope that they will conduct a free, fair and credible elections on Saturday.”

•Photo shows Alex Otti.

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