Yiaga Africa says the results of the presidential election from Imo and Anambra states are inconsistent with its projections for the states.
Development Diaries reports that many Nigerians, including civil society actors, have condemned the conduct of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.
Generally, logistics challenges, overvoting, voter inducement, delay in uploading results from polling units to IReV, and violence were observed during the polls.
In a statement to Development Diaries, Yiaga Africa said the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were manipulated.
INEC had promised Nigerians it would conduct free, fair and credible polls.
Specifically, the commission promised that there was no going back on the use of bimodal voter registration system (BVAS) for the 2023 elections.
However, that did not happen as the commission allowed the transmission of results manually, thereby raising concerns over election transparency.
BVAS is a device introduced by INEC that allows for the accreditation of voters through biometrics capturing, uploading of polling results and other functions.
‘The state-level presidential results for Imo and Rivers are inconsistent with the Yiaga Africa WTV projections for both states’, the statement read.
‘For Rivers, INEC announced 231,591 votes for APC or 44.2 percent; 175,071 for LP or 33.4 percent; and 88,468 for PDP or 16.9 percent.
‘This is in sharp contrast to the Yiaga Africa WTV estimates for Rivers which are: APC 21.7 percent ±5.0 percent; for LP 50.8 percent ±10.6 percent; and PDP 22.2 percent ±6.5 percent.
‘For Imo, INEC announced 66,406 for APC or 14.2 percent; 360,495 for LP or 77.1 percent; and 30,234; for PDP or 6.5 percent.
‘Again, this is at variance with the Yiaga Africa WTV estimates for Imo which are: APC 5.1 ±2.3 percent; LP 88.1 percent ±3.8 percent; and PDP 5.7 percent ±2.3 percent’.
The organisation said that based on reports from 97 percent of its sampled polling units, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ‘should receive between 34.4 percent and 37.4 percent of the vote, Labour Party (LP) should receive between 24.2 percent and 28.4 percent of the votes, the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) should receive between 4.6 percent and 6.4 percent of the vote, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) should receive between 28.3 percent and 31.1 percent of the vote, while no other political party should receive more than 0.3% of the vote’.
Besides the Yiaga Africa report, Development Diaries reporters were witnesses to some of the infractions in the elections.
We had called on the commission to publish a comprehensive report of BVAS across the country alongside the results of the presidential elections.
Also, as recommended by Yiaga Africa, INEC should clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results, especially from Rivers and Imo states; extend voting hours to 5:00pm in subsequent elections; as well as sustain the uploads of polling unit results to its IReV portal.
