Falz, son of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, did a parody song about it titled ‘Yakubu’. Twitter is awash with condemnations and videos about it. I am referring to the show of shame by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the just concluded general elections in Nigeria, West Africa. This climaxed in the recent declaration of an APC guber candidate as the winner of the supplementary elections held last week Saturday in Adamawa, contrary to the statistical findings from the votes collated.
Daily Trust reported it thus:
“…The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Adamawa State, Hudu Ari, has declared Aisha Dahiru, popularly called Binani, as the winner of the governorship election in the state. Mr Ari made the declaration Sunday morning amidst chaos at the collation centre in Yola, the state capital, Daily Trust reports. A video of Mr Ari announcing Binani the winner has since gone viral. However, according to the electoral law, the announcement should have been made by the returning officer of the election, who is a different person, usually an academic appointed by INEC for that purpose.
‘We’ve received reports of an illegal declaration of results by the @inecnigeria REC for #Adamawa in violation of S 64 & 65 Electoral Act 2022 & Part 3, INEC guidelines which vests the power to declare results solely on a Returning officer appointed by INEC,” prominent election observation group, Yiaga Africa, wrote on Twitter. We call on @inecnigeria to nullify the illegal declaration, suspend the REC for Adamawa state and take urgent actions to protect the integrity of the process.’
Mr Ari had earlier adjourned the collation to 11 a.m. Sunday but announced the winner an hour before the scheduled time. As of 1 a.m., before the adjournment, only results of relevant polling units in 10 out of 20 local governments had been announced with the PDP candidate, Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, still in the lead, Daily Trust reported.”
The Resident Electoral Commissioner was reportedly beaten up and stripped by angry mob who were obviously disgusted at his insistence to declare the APC candidate against all odds. It was also alleged that he was paid 2 billion naira to carry out the unsuccessful yew man job. Of course, the INEC has since denounced the result as false and are trying to carry out some damage control.
This drama played out at the backdrop of a shocking release by Premium Times that Peter Obi, from the findings of the results uploaded on the INEC online portal actually won the presidential election in Rivers State. This was contrary to the result that was read by the controversial INEC chairman, Mohammed Yakubu.
The said tabloid’s report read thus in part;
“The candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, won the 25 February presidential election in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, South-south Nigeria, according to results uploaded on the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV). Mr Obi’s haul of votes in the area implies he, and not Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the presidential election in Rivers, contrary to the declaration made by INEC.
“The result for Obio/Akpor council area, as declared by INEC, portrayed Mr Tinubu as scoring 80, 239 votes, with Mr Obi garnering 3,829 votes. Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 368 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party got 161 votes, this newspaper had reported. Mr Tinubu was later declared winner of the election. Atiku came second while Mr Obi came third. But PREMIUM TIMES’ review of the results from various polling units of the 17 wards in Obio/Akpor LGA as uploaded on IReV revealed a sharp contrast with the result declared by INEC.
“Methodology
Given that Mr Tinubu was declared winner in Obio/Akpor, this newspaper’s review focused on the results of the votes scored by the APC and LP in the area. By our tally, the APC got 17, 158 votes while the LP amassed 73,311 votes. Obio/Akpor Local Government Area has 1,211 polling units across its 17 wards.
“PREMIUM TIMES could only review results from 1,116 polling units uploaded on the IReV as of 16 March, representing about 94.13 percent of the results from the council area. However, results from some polling units were either blurred or improperly snapped and therefore illegible.
Results from about 95 polling units, representing about 5.87 per cent, were yet to be uploaded within the period under review. There were no results in some polling units either because the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System malfunctioned or people did not come out to cast their votes, as observed at Ake Hostel UNIPORT Polling Unit in Choba Ward.
This newspaper computed the available and readable results from the 1,116 polling units uploaded so far on the IReV within the period of the review.
Other findings
In some polling units in Obio/Akpor, PREMIUM TIMES found that some results were altered in favour of the APC, with the original scores mutilated. The result from Rumuorluoji Open Space II polling unit in Oro-Igwe Ward, for instance, showed that the APC originally scored 17 but the number, ‘2’ was added to the figure to read ‘217.’
For the LP, 227 was recorded, but the number ‘2’ was erased and altered to read ‘027.’
At the column meant for recording the scores in words, there were evidence of adjustments to suit the changed figures.
In Rumuokoro Ward, it was noticed that in 34 polling units, results earlier written for the LP were erased and the figures swapped with that of the APC.
PREMIUM TIMES, nevertheless, tallied the figures as published by INEC, despite the obvious evidence of adjustments and mutilations. In other words, the figures were tallied as they appeared on result sheets, even when there was evidence that such figures were tampered with. In some cases, the results for the National Assembly elections were uploaded in some polling units instead of the presidential election results. A result from the Civic Centre Hall Polling Unit in Rumuigbo Ward, for instance, showed that a result from the House of Representatives election was uploaded in place of that of the presidential election…”
These findings were most likely why the INEC chairman went back on his widely televised promise to Nigerians that the results of the elections would be transmitted on their portal in real time.
These instances are just a tip of the iceberg amongst several other instances on record which shows that indeed the INEC is grossly compromised, its integrity destroyed and that the just concluded general elections was flagrantly manipulated in favour of the APC and that it was actually a walk of shame by the Mohammed Yakubu led INEC.
@ostareze
