One of Nigeria’s leading civil society groups involved in electoral transparency, Yiaga Africa says there were inconsistencies in collated results in last Saturday’s governorship election in Edo state, suggesting that some figures were altered
This was contained in its post-election statement to AIT News, and jointly signed by the chairperson of Yiaga Africa’s election mission to Edo state, Aisha Abdullahi and its executive director Samson Itodo
The organization notes that while INEC consistently applied its guidelines in managing the accreditation and voting process in a significant number of polling units, there were incidents that created doubts on the integrity of the process.
On the plus side, it acknowledged that the BVAS machines functioned optimally, ensuring that
despite the late opening of voting, all voters on the queue by 2:30pm were allowed to vote.
It also says it’s Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology deployed for the election confirmed that presiding officers uploaded polling unit results on the IReV in a timely manner, making it possible for citizens to access polling unit level results.
However, it reports that the challenges began with the collation of results in particular local government councils.
According to Yiaga Africa, there were incidents of results manipulation and disruptions during ward and local government collation in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor and Oredo LGAs, including intimidation of INEC officials, observers and party agents.
MUST READ:Edo Governorship Election: Yiaga Africa Reports Peaceful Start, Logistical Hurdles
This according to it, made the results collation process run contrary to the provisions of the Electoral Act and INEC guidelines, severely undermining the credibility of the election.
Yiaga Africa says its findings also indicate inconsistencies with reports received from the sampled polling units which projected “narrow margin” vote share for each party.
It adds, “If the official results do not fall within Yiaga Africa’s estimated ranges,then the results may have been manipulated”.
INEC’s announced results showed the APC had 51.1% of the votes,
the PDP with 43.3% and the Labour Party with 4.0% of the votes.
But Yiaga Africa says its reports sampled from 287 of 300 (96%) polling units, indicates statistical inconsistencies with the official results released by INEC.
The report said, “the official results announced by INEC for APC in Oredo and Egor, LGAs fall outside the PRVT estimate.
In Esan West LGA,the official results for PDP fall outside the PRVT estimates. Also, in Oredo LGA,
the official results as announced for LP fall outside the PRVT estimates. These inconsistencies with Yiaga Africa’s PRVT estimates indicate that the results were altered at the level of collation”.
“The disparities between the official results released by INEC and Yiaga Africa’s PRVT estimates indicate manipulation of results during the collation process”.
The organization singled out biased INEC and security officials for interfering with the collation process and has recommended immediate investigation and prosecution of polling officials and collation officers who took part in results manipulation and flagrant violations of the guidelines on results collation.
Yiaga Africa also called on INEC to urgently clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results, especially election results from Oredo, Egor, Esan West and LGAs.
(Editor: Paul Akhagbemhe)
