The All Progressives Congress (APC) is coasting home to victory as its candidate in the Edo State governorship election, Mr Monday Okpebholo has secured a comfortable lead in the exercise held yesterday.
Results from 16 of the 18 council areas announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday showed that Okpebholo polled 244,549 votes, while Mr Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second with 195,954 votes.
The candidate of the Labour Party (LP) and former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr Olumide Akpata got a total of 13,348 votes.
Meanwhile, the state chapter of the PDP rejected the results of so far announced by the INEC.
In a letter addressed to the office of the chairman of the commission in Abuja and made available to journalists in Benin on Sunday by the state chairman of the PDP, Dr Tony Aziegbemi, the party alleged that the votes announced so far had been inflated to favour the APC.
The letter is entitled, Re: Protest against manufactured vote entries and unjust inflation of APC votes and deduction of PDP votes in the collation of results of Edo State Governorship Election held on 21 September 2024.’
Aziegbemi alleged that results from some units in three local governments – Akoko Edo, Egor and Estako West local government areas, were doctored and called for a re-collation.
The letter reads: “It has come to our attention that the Electoral Officers appointed by the 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 LGA, 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. For the PDP, the number of votes from the results uploaded on the IREV is 18,620, but 15,865 were returned on the EC8C declared by the LGA returning officer.
Similarly, election observer groups raised concerns about the transparency of the INEC in the ongoing governorship election in Edo State.
The election observer groups made their position known in a statement jointly signed by the Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room, Yiaga Africa, Kimpact Development Initiative, Nigerian Women Trust Fund, ElectHER and TAF Africa.
In a joint statement issued on Sunday, the groups wrote: “We, the undersigned accredited civil society organisations observing the 2024 Edo Governorship Election, express concern over the transparency of the ongoing results collation by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“Reports of disruptions at ward and local government collation centres, including intimidation of INEC officials and attempts to collate results contrary to the provisions of the Electoral Act and INEC guidelines, raise significant concerns about the credibility of the results collation process.
“We acknowledge INEC’s recent statement recognising reports of result mutilation and its commitment to investigate and address any proven violations.
“In light of this, we urge INEC to invoke its powers under Section 65 of the Electoral Act 2022 to review any declarations and returns where results were not declared voluntarily or violated provisions of the Electoral Act and INEC regulations, and guidelines.
“We further call on security agencies to refrain from interference in the collation process and to ensure that accredited party agents, the media, and election observers are granted full access to collation centres. We wish to emphasise that the role of security agencies in the election is to safeguard the process and not to create a situation that will undermine the transparency of the process and thus impact negatively on the credibility of the outcome of the election.”
