One Week After Declaring Buhari President-elect, INEC Yet to Address Discrepancies in Poll

One week after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
declared Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as
the president-elect, the electoral umpire has refused to address and
provide more explanations on the noticeable discrepancies  witnessed
during the February 23 presidential election.

Prior to the elections, the electoral body had revealed that the total
number of registered voters was 84,004,084.

Also, in order to ensure voters were not disenfranchised, the
commission adopted simultaneous accreditation and voting, which it
believed, would save time and also discourage discrepancies, but this
was not to be considering what was witnessed during the exercise.

The INEC  Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had last Wednesday declared
Buhari as the winner, having polled a total of 15,191,847 votes to
defeat Atiku Abubakar who scored 11,262,978 votes.

He also declared  that 29,364,209 voters were accredited, while the
total number of valid votes were 27,324,583;  total rejected votes of
1,289,607, and  total votes cast, 28,614,190.
Yakubu, at the collation centre where he declared Buhari as the winner
said that a total number of 82,344,107 voters were registered for the
election out of which 29,364,209 voters were accredited.

This means that a total of 1.6 million people are missing in the voter
register, considering the fact that the number of registered voters
was over 84 million, while the number of collated voters, according to
the INEC chairman, was over 82 million.

When contacted to provide clarification on the issues
relating to discrepancies between total number of registered voters
and collated voters; number of voters accredited through smart card
readers and 1.6 million missing voters, INEC National Commissioner and
Chairman Voter Education and Publicity, Mr. Festus Okoye, said that he
would need to consult the Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) department of the commission before he could respond to the
questions.

Also, calls and text message via WhatsApp to the Chief Press Secretary
to INEC chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi were not responded to, while the
Director of Vote Education and Publicity, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, did not
respond either.


However, the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, at the national
collation centre, before declaring Buhari as the winner of the
election said that a total number of 82,344,107 ‘collated voters' were
registered for the election as against over 84 million registered
voters in the commission’s data base.

Baffled with the discrepancies, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
agent and former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, who was at the
national collation centre observed that the main opposition party did
not accept the result as representing the valid votes of Nigerians.

He stated: “We have made three issues: first, after all the investment
in technology, we required INEC, after spending N27 billion in this
year’s budget alone on technology, we had expected that today, INEC
would have, for the purpose of transparency not just for law, have
projected to us the result of what the card reader that they used
displayed about the people that went through the card reader
verification. That singular act put a dent in the image of the
election.


“The second one is the issues we raised about the number of registered
vis-à-vis  what the chairman now calls collated voters means that 1.6
million people are missing in the voter register. We think that issue
is substantial enough to require a resolution.


“We also believed that the  difference between the accredited voters
and the votes cast which came to about 750,000 votes requires an issue
to be looked at.
“Finally, we believed that the cancellations that took place in the
election impacting 2.7 million voters required be looked into
seriously.
“So, in our view, this election required to be looked at again and
possibly we would have had rerun. More importantly, we think that INEC
should have looked consciously to the use of the card reader. The
absence of card reader is a major violation in the elections; it
renders that election null and void. That’s what the chairman promised
us,” Chidoka had said.
But despite the protest by the PDP, Yakubu said the commission would
deliberate on it before taking a decision.
However, after about three hours of  deliberation, the Chairman noted
that the difference in the valid votes and cancellation were
insignificant to impact on the general outcome of the election.
He stressed that all the observations raised by the opposition were
noted and would be needed for future elections in the country.
Yakubu stated: “In relations to the issues raised, there are
specifically three of them that the commission wishes to make some
preliminary statement on. We said preliminary statement because during
collation we haven’t had all the time in the world to look at these
issues indepth”
“The first one is that the figures of accredited voters in relation to
the votes cast were not adding up in one or two instances. We have
noticed that and our preliminary investigations and analysis revealed
there are a number of figures that were carried from the field and
were adding up and the states were also adding up from 176,000
locations nationwide as polling units and voting points.