Drama ensued on Sunday at the collation of the Abia governorship poll result in Umuahia, when agents of All Progressives Congress (APC), All Progressives Grand Alliance

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the agents walked out in protest, calling for the cancellation of the poll by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

They accused the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of conniving with INEC to manipulate the results in favour of the PDP.

Mr Iheanacho Obioma, State Agent of APC said that the collation should not continue:”What we have seen is caricature of what collation should be.

“I believe that at every level of this process the guidelines must be followed.

“We saw how INEC refused to go to the next level of collation after the vote collation.

“There is no collation in the ward, rather they bundled everybody to one small place in different local government areas to do whatever they felt is collation.

“Meanwhile, they had promised before the election that they were going to observe that by doing ward collation.

“What we know about electoral process is that if there are any issues that were raised at any level, it will be corrected at that level.

“INEC promised that anything that will not be captured by the card reader in terms of accreditation and others will not be accepted as a result.

“The results coming from Ngwa areas cannot stand as a result.

“INEC is fully aware that election never took place in these places,” he said.

He alleged that the same collation officer that allegedly manipulated the result in 2015 was also brought to perpetuate the same act.

“We are calling on the National Chairman of INEC not to accept any result coming from Abia until a proper investigation has been done.

“Our position is that election in Abia should be cancelled,” he said.

Uzo Nwachukwu and Mike Akpara, APGA party agents said their party was in agreement with APC, saying, what happened in Abia was not election.

They said their party had earlier written petitions to electoral officers about the alleged irregularities noted.

They called for the cancellation of the results, saying that INEC in the state had compromised.

Uchenna Erondu Junior, the PDP State Agent, countered the allegations and asked the opposition parties to go to court if they were not satisfied with the exercise so far.

Prof. Benjamin Ozumba, the State Collation Officer called for calm at the center.

He said: “This should not cause a problem because the results are still coming in. Let us remain calm.

“If you are not satisfied with the process, the right thing to do is to seek redress and if you have any petition, I encourage you to submit it here and it will be investigated.

“As you can see, all we are doing is what we are required by the electoral act to do,” he said.

Gabriel Eliagwu, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, who intervened with his men to calm the situation, advised the political parties not to cause any further trouble at the collation centre.