Yiaga Africa, a civil society organization (CSO), asserts that the Edo governorship election held on September 21 did not meet integrity standards.
On September 22, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the victor of the election.
In a statement released by Samson Itodo, Yiaga’s executive director, and Aisha Abdullahi, chairperson of the 2024 Edo election mission, the organization highlighted that the election collation process was plagued by inconsistencies indicative of vote manipulation.
“Based on reports from 287 of 300 (96%) sampled polling units, Yiaga Africa’s statistical analysis shows inconsistencies in the official results announced by INEC,” the statement reads.
“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 strongly 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.
“Yiaga Africa notes that the cases of disruption in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor, and Oredo LGAs in the course of collation created opportunities for election manipulation, raising significant concerns about the credibility and integrity of the results collation process.”
According to Yiaga, “INEC’s turnout and rejected ballots for the 18 LGA released are consistent with Yiaga Africa WTV PRVT estimates”.
“Yiaga Africa is able to estimate that turnout is between 20.9% and 24.1% (22.5% ± 1.6%), while INEC’s official result is 22.4%,” it said.
“Similarly, Yiaga Africa estimates for rejected ballots are between 2.2% and 3.2% (2.7% ± 0.5%).”
The CSO also noted that voter turnout was low when compared with the last election in the state.
“In this election, only 22.4% of the voters turned out to exercise their civic rights, lower than the 27% turnout observed in 2020,” the statement reads.
“Nevertheless, Yiaga Africa commends the resilience of the voters who turned out despite the rain and voting delays, staying back to fulfil their civic duties.”
In its recommendations, Yiaga Africa called for the “immediate investigation and prosecution of polling officials and collation officers who are engaged in results manipulation and flagrant violations of the guidelines on results collation”.
It further asked INEC to “urgently clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results, especially election results from Oredo, Egor and Esan West LGAs”.
