" ITREALMS: Yiaga Africa faults INEC over Rivers State results, says Peter Obi won with 50.8% votes - ITREALMS

Wednesday, March 01, 2023

Yiaga Africa faults INEC over Rivers State results, says Peter Obi won with 50.8% votes - ITREALMS

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Yiaga Africa has faulted the Independent National Electoral Commission’s announcement of the presidential election in Rivers and Imo State, which they alleged is opposite of the observations from the polls, reports 
ITREALMS.
Yiaga Africa faults INEC over Rivers State results, says Peter Obi won with 50.8% votes - ITREALMS

Early on Wednesday, INEC had announced Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election held last Saturday along the National Assembly elections.
According to Yiaga Africa Watchng, the votes projected for both states of Rivers and Imo were inconsistence with their observations and urged INEC to probe states where results were released under dress.

ITREALMS recalled that “For Rivers, INEC announced 231591 votes for APC on 44.2 percent, 175, 071 votes for the Labour party(33.4 percent), and 88,468 for Peoples Democratic Party representing 16.9 percent.

This, Yiaga Africa noted, is in sharp contrast to the YIAGA Africa estimate for Rivers which are: APC, 21. 7 % plus minus 5 percent, for the Labour Party, 50.8 percent plus minus 10.6, PDP, 22.2 percent plus minus 6 percent,” Member of the YIAGA’s board, Dr. Aisha Abdulahi, revealed during its post-election statement on the 2023 presidential election.

Aisha told participants at the press conference including officials of the United Nations, European Union and Civil Society Groups that YIAGA’s observers obtained its data through random sampling of several polling units totalling over 1,500 polling units.

For instance, in Imo state, Aisha disclosed that though INEC announced 66,406 votes for APC or 14.2%, 360,495 for LP or 77.1% and 30,234 for PDP or 6.5%, its estimate from the state puts APC at 5.1 percent plus or minus 2.3 percent, LP at 88.1 percent (plus or minus 3.8 percent) while PDP had 5.7 percent (plus or minus 2.3 percent).

YIAGA maintained that there were alleged inconsistencies from the presidential election results, particularly from Rivers and Imo state.

The in-depth research group, she said, found eight instances (0.5 percent of polling units) of irregularities in voter turnout where turnout was allegedly over 100%.

It also advised that INEC should probe results from states where announcements were made under duress.

“Yiaga Africa notes that these polling units may have been cancelled at the point of collation. Yiaga Africa urges INEC to publish a list of all cancelled polling units,” she said.

In its preliminary recommendations on Wednesday, Yiaga called for a comprehensive audit and investigation to unravel the factors resulting in the delayed upload of election results on INEC’s online portal, saying it is “critical”.

He added that anyone found complicit in sabotaging this “critical aspect of the election should be sanctioned,” describing the electoral umpire’s failure to immediately upload results from polling units as a “flagrant disregard” of its guidelines.

Yiaga insisted that INEC has to clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results especially the presidential election results from Rivers and Imo states.

Other recommendations are as follows:” Voting hours should be extended to 5pm to increase voter participation in subsequent elections.

“Legal timelines for testing new electoral technologies should be introduced to Nigeria’s electoral legal framework.

“INEC should provide clarification on its interpretation of key aspects of the legal framework on issues like results collation and transmission process, the threshold for determining the winner in an election and the Commission’s power to review election results declared under duress or in contravention of the Electoral Act, INEC guidelines and manual.

“INEC should sustain the uploads of polling units results form EC 8A on its IReV portal.”

As for the already announced results by INEC Headquarters, Aisha said it still “falls within our confidence limits and our margin of errors.”

“Based on reports from 97 percent (1,453 of 1,507) of sample.

Uboshe Uboshe with additional report from The Whirstler



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