Elections: How Rivers State results were manipulated – Yiaga Africa

Civil rights organisation, Yiaga Africa, has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of manipulating the results of the February 25 general elections in Imo and Rivers states.

The organisation made the allegation in its post-election statement signed by the Chair, Watching The Vote and Executive Director, Samson Itodo, titled, ‘The 2023 presidential elections are once again a missed opportunity: INEC must be fundamentally reformed.’

According to Yiaga Africa, the results announced by INEC were inconsistent with its projections for the states.

The statement read, “The state-level presidential results for Imo and Rivers are inconsistent with the Yiaga Africa WTV projections for both states. For Rivers, INEC announced 231,591 votes for APC or 44.2 percent; 175,071 for LP or 33.4 percent; and 88,468 for PDP or 16.9 percent. This is in sharp contrast to the Yiaga Africa WTV estimates for Rivers which are: APC 21.7 percent ±5.0 percent; for LP 50.8 percent ±10.6 percent; and PDP 22.2 percent ±6.5 percent. For Imo, INEC announced 66,406 for APC or 14.2 percent; 360,495 for LP or 77.1 percent; and 30,234; for PDP or 6.5 percent. Again, this is at variance with the Yiaga Africa WTV estimates for Imo which are: APC 5.1 ±2.3 percent; LP 88.1 percent ±3.8 percent; and PDP 5.7 percent ±2.3 percent.”

Yiaga Africa, which had 3,030 observers in all the polling units and local government areas, said that based on reports from 97 percent of its sampled polling units, the All Progressives Congress (APC) had higher votes.

“Based on reports from 97 percent (1,453 of 1507) of sampled polling units, Yiaga Africa’s statistical analysis shows that the APC should receive between 34.4 percent and 37.4 percent of the vote, LP should receive between 24.2 percent and 28.4 percent of the votes, the New Nigeria Peoples Party should receive between 4.6 percent and 6.4 percent of the vote, Peoples Democratic Party should receive between 28.3 percent and 31.1 percent of the vote, while no other political party should receive more than 0.3 percent of the vote,” Yiaga Africa stated.

The report recommended that INEC should clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results, especially from Rivers and Imo states; extend voting hours to 5:00 pm in subsequent elections, as well as sustain the uploads of polling unit results form EC 8A on its INEC Result Viewing portal.