As Nigerians awaits the final results of the Saturday’s Governorship election in Edo State, the State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has kicked against the collation of final results across the 18 local government areas.
Tony Aziegbemi, the State chairman of the party at a press conference on Sunday alleged that the manipulation of the collation of the results was to favour APC.
He alleged that the manipulation cut- across all the 18 Local Government Areas.
Aziegbemi, alleged that the collation and announcement was inflated in favour of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, conducted off-cycle governorship election in the State on September 21, 2024.
Also recalled that the PDP governors had earlier in the day at a press conference protested against the collation of results in 12 local government.
Aziegbemi, alleged that there are discrepancies in the results offloaded on the INEC Irev, forms EC8C and EC8B
He, however, urged the chairman of the Commission, Mahmood Yakubu and the commission to review the collated result before the final declaration of the results.
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 totally 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 was recorded in the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer.
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“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 was entered in the EC8B.
“Also, in Ward 6 Akoko Edo LGA, where elections did not hold 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 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 16,712 but 17,483 was returned on the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer’,he said.
Read also: Edo Decides: INEC Declares 16 LGA out of 18
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 for 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.
