The Independent National Electoral Commission has been accused of manipulating the Edo State governorship election result in favour of the All-Progressive Congress candidate.
This allegation was made by social-political group YIAGA Africa in a statement signed by its Executive Director, Samson Itodo and the 2024 Edo Election Mission chairperson Dr Aisha Abdullahi. The group posted on its X social media Monday that INEC rewrote the results at the collation centres.
INEC declared Sunday that the election was won by Monday Okpebholo of the APC with 291,667 while Asue Ighodalo of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), scored 247,274 votes.
According to the statement, there are inconsistencies in the results announced by INEC for the election and what was uploaded on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
“Based on reports received from the sampled polling units, Yiaga Africa can project the expected vote shares for each party within a narrow margin,” said the statement.
“However, Yiaga Africa is only able to verify the election outcome if it falls within its estimated margins. If the official results do not fall within Yiaga Africa’s estimated ranges, then the results may have been manipulated.
“According to INEC, the All-Progressive Congress (APC) received 51.1% of the votes, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) 43.3% of the votes, and the Labor Party garnered 4.0% of the votes. Based on reports from 287 of 300 (96%) sampled polling units, Yiaga Africa’s statistical analysis shows inconsistencies in the official results announced by INEC.”
It noted that the results announced by INEC for Oredo and Egor local government areas fall outside the PRVT estimates.
“For instance, 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. Yiaga Africa strongly condemns the actions of some biased INEC officials who altered figures during collation including the actions of some security officials who interfered with the collation process.
“Yiaga Africa notes that the cases of disruption in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor, and Oredo LGAs in the course of collation created opportunities for election manipulation, raising significant concerns about the credibility and integrity of the results collation process.”
Yiaga Africa, however, noted that the turnout estimates of INEC are consistent with what YIAGA found out.
“INEC’s turnout and rejected ballots for the 18 LGA released are consistent with Yiaga Africa WTV PRVT estimates. Yiaga Africa is able to estimate that turnout is between 20.9% and 24.1% (22.5% ± 1.6%), while INEC’s official result is 22.4%.
“Similarly, Yiaga Africa estimates for rejected ballots are between 2.2% and 3.2% (2.7% ± 0.5%).”
“Yiaga Africa notes that in terms of turnout, voters did not meet the resilience test as voter turnout plummeted despite high PVC collection rates recorded,” the statement added.
