Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, has expressed confidence that he will win the ongoing governorship election despite claims of a plot by a rival party to manipulate the results during collation.
Speaking after casting his vote at polling unit 002, Umuezeadigo Street, Isuofia, in Aguata Local Government Area, Soludo alleged that one of his opponents had already prepared fake results with plans to swap them during the collation process.
“One party — I don’t want to mention the candidate — their only strategy is that they have written results which they want to swap during collation,” he said. “They were even telling polling agents not to fill the result sheets properly or upload the results on IReV so that they can manipulate the process.”
Soludo, who is seeking re-election under the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), said the alleged plan would fail, stressing that the people of Anambra were alert and ready to defend their votes.
“Our people are vigilant, organised and united. We’ll follow the process from the polling unit to the state collation centre, and once the system works, we’ll win all 21 local governments,” he declared confidently.
The governor described the election as largely peaceful across the state, aside from minor technical issues with the BVAS machines and reports of vote buying in some areas.
He commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for its conduct of the exercise and reiterated his faith in the fairness of the electoral process.
“I said even if they share ₦100,000, never mind. Let the people just vote and count the votes. It doesn’t matter for us,” he said. “We’re fairly convinced that on the basis of the votes — one man, one vote — we are going to win and win landslide.”
He concluded by reaffirming that APGA’s strong grassroots presence across all 21 local governments and 326 wards would guarantee a convincing victory once genuine votes were collated.
Melissa Enoch
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