Yiaga Africa alleges widespread manipulation in the Edo election results, casting doubt on the integrity of the governorship poll. Learn more here.

An authorized observer for this Saturday’s off-cycle Edo State governorship election, Yiaga Africa, has expressed doubts about the poll’s integrity, alleging extensive manipulation.

This claim was made by the group, which is well-known for supporting electoral openness, in a post-election statement that was co-signed by Yiaga Africa Executive Director Samson Itodo and Dr. Aisha Abdullahi, Chair of the 2024 Edo Election Mission.

Yiaga Africa voiced doubts even after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that Senator Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) had won with 291,667 votes, defeating Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with 247,274 votes and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party (LP) with 22,763 votes.

In order to monitor polling places throughout all 18 local government districts, the organization used its Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) approach, sending out 300 fixed and 25 roving monitors. According to Yiaga Africa’s findings, there were serious flaws that damaged the election’s legitimacy.

Yiaga Africa is able to independently evaluate the standard of Election Day procedures and confirm the correctness of the official election results as declared by INEC thanks to the PRVT. In order to ensure prompt and accurate reporting of the election process, Yiaga Africa observers were also dispatched to the State and LGA results collation centers.

“Yiaga Africa has effectively implemented this concept in 16 off-cycle governorship elections and two presidential elections… Although some degree of compliance was observed in the areas of material deployment and other processes, the credibility of the election results was seriously undermined by instances of results manipulation and disruptions during ward and local government collation in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor, and Oredo LGAs. These incidents included intimidation of INEC officials, observers, and party agents, as well as the collation of results in violation of INEC guidelines and the Electoral Act.

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Yiaga Africa is able to forecast the expected vote shares for each party to within a small margin based on reports from the sampled PUs. But Yiaga Africa can only confirm the election results if they are within the anticipated margins. The official findings could have been changed if they do not fall within Yiaga Africa’s estimated ranges.

“51.1% of the votes went to the APC, 43.3% went to the PDP, and 4.0% went to the LP, according to INEC. The official results released by INEC appear inconsistent, according to Yiaga Africa’s statistical analysis based on reports from 287 of 300 (96%) sampled PUs.

For example, the official results for the APC in the LGAs of Oredo and Egor, as declared by INEC, do not match the PRVT projection. The official PDP results in Esan West LGA do not match the PRVT projections. Additionally, the official results for LP that were made public in Oredo LGA do not match the PRVT projections.

These discrepancies from Yiaga Africa’s PRVT estimates suggest that the collation process was used to tamper with the results. Yiaga Africa’s PRVT estimates and the official results published by INEC differ, suggesting that results were manipulated during the collation process.

“Yiaga Africa denounces the activities of certain security officials who tampered with the collation process as well as the biased INEC officials who changed figures during the process.

“Yiaga Africa notes that there are serious concerns regarding the credibility and integrity of the results collation process due to the disruption cases in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor, and Oredo LGAs during the collation process, which created opportunities for election manipulation.”

In particular, violence directed at voters and election officials was denounced in the report, which also denounced the interruption of voting and results collation by political thugs and hoodlums. These developments were stated to compromise the integrity of the elections.

Additionally, Yiaga Africa stated that the election’s turnout failed the resilience test, with only 22.4% of voters casting ballots, much lower than the 27% turnout seen in 2020, despite the election’s strong PVC collecting rates.

In spite of the rain and polling delays, Yiaga Africa commends the voters’ tenacity for showing up to vote and carrying out their civic duty.

There are procedures for resentful parties to investigate, as well as alternative legal avenues, thus the Yiaga Africa declaration, according to an INEC official, cannot be utilized as a foundation for evaluating the election.

The official, who begged to remain anonymous, added that Mallam Mohammed Haruna’s promise on Saturday that the commission will consider the complaints it received and take appropriate action is still valid.