By Abiola Olawale
A civil Society group, Yiaga Africa has raised allegations of manipulation of results in the just-concluded Edo State governorship election.
The group claimed that the Edo State governorship poll failed the integrity test.
This was contained in a statement jointly issued on Monday by Yiaga Africa’s Chairman of the 2024 Edo Election Mission, Dr Aisha Abdullahi, and its Executive Director, Samson Itodo.
The group revealed that it deployed the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology to observe the election.
This system involved 300 stationary and 25 roving observers, covering a representative sample of polling units across all 18 LGAs.
The group stated that the official figures announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INa EC) for Oredo Local Government Area falls outside its estimate.
Similarly, the group, in the report alleged that the figures declared for the Labour Party candidate, Olumide Akpata, in the local government is outside its estimated margin.
The statement reads in part: “While key processes such as accreditation, voting, counting, and recording of results at the polling unit substantially complied with procedures, the results collation process was compromised by the actions of some biased INEC officials in connivance with other actors.
“This manipulation severely undermines the overall integrity of the election.
“Yiaga Africa’s estimates are based on official results announced at the polling unit, from a representative random sample of polling units. As highlighted in our pre-election report, Yiaga Africa will, amongst other factors, consider the quality of election day processes in assessing whether the 2024 Edo governorship satisfies the electoral integrity test. In this regard, Yiaga Africa considered the integrity of accreditation, voting, counting, and collation of results.
“INEC consistently applied its guidelines in managing the accreditation and voting process in a significant number of polling units. Despite some isolated incidents, the election Statement on the September 2024 Edo State Governorship Election of inadequate election materials, the BVAS machines functioned optimally, and all voters in the queue by 2:30 pm were allowed to vote, despite the late opening of polls. The polling officials uploaded polling unit results on the IReV promptly, making it possible for citizens to access polling unit-level results.
“However, the incidents of results manipulation and disruptions during ward and local government collation in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor and Oredo LGAs, including intimidation of INEC officials, observers and party agents and the collation of results contrary to the provisions of the Electoral Act and INEC guidelines, severely undermine the credibility of the election results.”
This comes after the INEC declared Monday that Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was the winner of the Edo State governorship election.
According to the official results, Okpebholo polled 291,667 votes to defeat his closest rival, Asue Ighodalo, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 247,274.
The Labour Party (LP) candidate, Olumide Akpata, came a distant third with 22,763 votes.
