Yiaga Africa, the continent’s frontline non-profit organisation promoting participatory democracy, human rights and civic participation, has reported that last Saturday’s governorship election in Edo State failed the “electoral integrity test”. It attributed this to “lack of transparency in the results collation process, which led to the manipulation of results”.
On Sunday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Monday Okpebholo as the winner of the election contested by 16 other candidates. He pulled 291,667 votes and won in 11 Local Government Areas (LGAs) to defeat closest rival, Dr, Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 247,274 votes and winning in seven LGAs; while Labour Party’s Barrister Olumide Akpata had 22,763 votes.
In the report released on Monday, Yiaga Africa said: “While key processes such as accreditation, voting, counting, and recording of results at the polling unit substantially complied with procedures, the results collation process was compromised by the actions of some baised INEC officials in connivance with other actors. This manipulation severely undermines the overall integrity of the election”.
The organisation said that sampled polling units’ reports showed “inconsistencies in the official results
announced by INEC”.
According to the report by Yiaga Africa’s Executive Director, Samson Itodo; and Chair of the 2024 Edo Election Mission, Dr. Aisha Abdullahi, the organisation based its conclusions on reports received from the sampled polling units. “Yiaga Africa can project the expected vote shares for each party within a narrow margin. 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”.
Yiaga Africa reported: “According to INEC, the All Progressive Congress (APC) received 51.1 per cent of the votes, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) 43.3 per cent of the votes, and the Labour Party (LP) garnered 4.0 per cent of the votes. Based on reports from 287 of 300 (96 per cent) sampled polling units, Yiaga Africa’s statistical analysis shows inconsistencies in the official results announced by INEC. For instance, the official results announced by INEC for APC in Oredo and Egor LGAs fall outside the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (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 then called for the “immediate investigation and prosecution of polling officials and collation officers who are engaged in results manipulation and flagrant violations of the guidelines on results collation”.
It also urged INEC to “urgently clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results, especially election results from Oredo, Egor, Esan West and LGAs.
“INEC should issue detailed guidelines for exercising its powers to review declarations and returns made contrary to provisions of the Electoral Act and regulations and guidelines. This should include procedures for receiving complaints, timeframe, format and who is eligible to submit complaints.
“It is imperative to integrate the IReV and electronic transmission of results into the electoral legal framework to confer legality on polling unit level results uploaded on the portal. To this end, the National Assembly should expeditiously amend the Electoral Act to make electronic transmission of results mandatory”.
