The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been accused of cloning electoral fraudsters as leaders.

The allegation was made by the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi.

He said as a result, the electoral umpire is wasting the time and resources of the country.

Obi made this known in their final address filed before the Presidential Election Petitions Court dated July 23.

Obi and LP consequently warned that elections in Nigeria will remain a fraud if the court fails to whip INEC into line to do its electoral duties reasonably, impartially and independently.

He also accused INEC of abandoning its primary statutory responsibility of being an electoral umpire and proudly putting on the toga of a candidate in the election it conducted.

““In the case of PDP v. Alechenu (2019) LPELR-49199 (CA), this honourable court admonished the 1st Respondent (INEC), who appears to have misunderstood its public duty, thus: Often one finds cases where INEC plays games with election materials and would not allow the petitioner(s) access to documents used in the conduct of the election, even with court order(s) to produce same, as in this case, thus playing the cards of the declared winner, openly, to frustrate the petition,”” Obi and LP stated.

Going further, Obi accused INEC of failing to upload/transmit the election result in real-time from the polling unit to the IReV on election day.

He said:

“By this, INEC represented and assured that it would use Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the accreditation of voters in the polling units and the upload/transmission of the results of the election in real-time on the day of the election to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV).

“However, contrary to the requirement of the law and in manifest disregard of its own representations, the 1st respondent (INEC) abandoned and discarded the much-expected upload/transmission of the result of the election in real-time on the day of the election from the polling unit to the IReV.

“Rather, and very strangely, blurred, unreadable and inaccessible documents/images were uploaded by the 1st respondent to the IReV purporting same to be the result of the election in various polling units.

“These blurred images and inaccessible documents were purported to result from the polling units’ election.

“The net result of uploading the blurred images on the IReV was that the election could neither be authenticated nor verified, and thus, lacked credibility and transparency.”