As reactions continue to trail the conduct of last Saturday’s Guber election in Edo State, Prominent election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa says there was widespread manipulation of the election results.
In its report, co-signed by Dr. Aisha Abdullahi and Samson Itodo, Yiaga Africa revealed that the group deployed 300 stationary and 25 roving observers across all 18 local government areas to monitor the election.
While pointing out that the Process and Results Verification for Transparency, (PRVT) methodology was used to assess the election’s integrity, it made it clear that the findings indicate incidents of results manipulation and disruptions during ward and local government collation in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor, and Oredo LGAs.
“The PRVT enables Yiaga Africa to independently assess the quality of Election Day processes and verify the accuracy of the official election results as announced by INEC,” the report stated.
The group noted that its statistical analysis indicates inconsistencies in the official results announced by INEC, particularly in Oredo, Egor, and Esan West LGAs, resulting to disruptions and manipulation during collation and undermining the credibility of the election results.
According to it, “Based on reports received from the sampled PUs, 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.”
It further pointed out that “According to INEC, the APC received 51.1% of the votes, PDP 43.3% of the votes, and the LP garnered 4.0% of the votes. Based on reports from 287 of 300 (96%) sampled PUs, 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 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 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.
Recall, INEC declared Okpebholo as the winner, with 291,667 votes and Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with 247,274 votes, while Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party (LP) garnered 22,763 votes.
