The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Edo State has protested the alleged inflation of results in favour of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Saturday’s governorship election in the state.
According to report the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, conducted an off-cycle governorship election in the state on September 21, 2024.
Following the elections, PDP governors at a press conference protested the collation of results in 12 local governments.
Briefing the press in the State Government’s House on Sunday, the State chairman of the party, Tony Aziegbemi alleged that the manipulation of the collation of the results to favour APC cut- across all the 18 Local Government Areas.
Aziegbemi alleged that there are discrepancies in the results uploaded on the INEC Irev, forms EC8C and EC8B.
He, however, urged the chairman of the Commission, Mahmood Yakubu to review the collated results before the final declaration.
He specifically faulted the results in Akoko-Edo, Etsako West and Egor Local Government Areas where the party lost to the main opposition party in the state, APC.
According to him, “It has come to our attention that the Electoral Officers appointed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the Edo State Governorship election, made entries that are totallywere different from the actual results as uploaded on the INEC IREV, thereby unjustly inflating votes in favour of the APC and deducting the votes of the PDP.
“In Akoko-Edo local government area, a simple collation of all the votes recorded in the polling unit results uploaded on the IREV shows that the APC obtained 25,010 votes while 34,847 votes were recorded in the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer.
“While for the PDP, a collation of the votes from the results uploaded on the IREV is 18,620 but 15,865 was returned on the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer.
”It would interest you that in Ward 9 Akoko Edo LGA, from the 36 Polling Unit
results uploaded on the IREV, the total votes obtained by APC is 2,350 while 9104 was entered into the EC8B result for APC. The total votes for PDP is 1359 while 633 were entered in the EC8B.
“Also, in Ward 6 Akoko Edo LGA, where elections were not held in Ward 6 Units 12, 17, 15, 18, 14 and 16, results were returned for the said polling units in the Ward Result sheet (EC8B).
“In Egor local government area, a simple collation of all the votes recorded in the polling unit results uploaded on the IREV shows that the APC obtained 10,972 votes while 16,760 votes was recorded in the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer while for the PDP, a collation of the votes from the results uploaded on the IREV is 14,485 but 14,658 was returned on the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer.
“Also in Etsako West LGA, it would interest you to note that the collation of the Egor LGA was not done at the designated LGA centre but was moved to the INEC State HQ and the PDP agent was not allowed access to be part of the exercise.
“A simple collation of all the votes recorded in the polling unit results uploaded on the IREV shows that the APC obtained 29,858 votes while 32,107 votes were recorded in the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer. For the PDP, a collation of the votes from the results uploaded on the IREV is 16,712 but 17,483 was returned on the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer’, he said.
He opined that the above highlighted irregularities which are very apparent are extremely scandalous and a brazen attempt to steal the mandate of the PDP and also a terrible embarrassment to the commission.
Aziegbemi, however, demanded the immediate re-collation and recompilation of the alleged actual results for the various polling units in the aforementioned Local Government Areas in compliance with the INEC guidelines and regulations which mandate that votes from various units and wards be properly collated.
