- Safiu Kehinde
YIAGA Africa has declared that the Edo state governorship election failed integrity and resilience tests.
This was disclosed in a statement issued by the election monitoring group on their official X handle on Monday.
According to the group, the test was assessed based on the level of resilience, as observed during accreditation, voting, counting, and collation of results.
Despite lauding the punctuality of INEC officials and their conducts at the poll, YIAGA declared that the just concluded election failed the integrity test due to inconsistencies such vote manipulation, results manipulation, and disruption of wards collation amongst others observed during the election.
“INEC consistently applied its guidelines in managing the accreditation and voting process in a significant number of polling units.
“Despite some isolated incidents of inadequate election materials, the BVAS machines functioned optimally, and all voters in the queue by 2:30pm were allowed to vote, despite the late opening of polls.
“The polling officials uploaded polling unit results on the IReV in a timely manner, 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.” YIAGA wrote.
The group harped on results manipulation which further dampened the integrity of the poll.
“According to INEC, the All Progressive Congress (APC) received 51.1% of the votes,
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) 43.3% of the votes, and the Labor Party garnered
4.0% of the votes. Based on reports from 287 of 300 (96%) sampled polling units, Yiaga Africa’s statistical analysis shows inconsistencies in the official results announced by INEC.
“For instance, the official results announced by INEC for APC in Oredo and Egor, LGAs fall outside the PRVT estimate. In Esan West LGA, the official results for PDP fall outside the PRVT estimates. Also, in Oredo LGA, the official results as announced for LP fall outside the PRVT estimates.
“These inconsistencies with Yiaga Africa’s PRVT estimates indicate that the results were altered at the level of collation.
“The disparities between the official results released by INEC and Yiaga Africa’s PRVT estimates indicate manipulation of results during the collation process.
“Yiaga Africa strongly condemns the actions of some biased INEC officials who altered figures during collation including the actions of some security officials who interfered with the collation process.
“Yiaga Africa notes that the cases of disruption in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor, and Oredo LGAs in the course of collation created opportunities for election manipulation, raising significant concerns about the credibility and integrity of the results collation process.” the goup added.
While expressing satisfaction with the rate of rejected votes which they claimed aligned with their estimates, YIAGA however decried low turnout of voters, stressing that it failed to meet the resilience test.
“INECs turnout and rejected ballots for the 18 LGA released are consistent with Yiaga Africa WTV PRVT estimates. Yiaga Africa is able to estimate that turnout is between 20.9% and 24.1% (22.5% ± 1.6%), while INEC’s official result is 224%.
“Similarly, Yiaga Africa estimates for rejected ballots are between 2.2% and 3.2% (2.7% ± 0.5%).
“Yiaga Africa notes that in terms of turnout, voters did not meet the resilience test as voter turnout plummeted despite high PVC collection rates recorded for the governorship election. In this election, only 22.4% of the voters turned out to exercise their civic rights, lower than the 27% turnout observed in 2020.
“Nevertheless, Yiaga Africa commends the resilience of the voters who turned out despite the rain and voting delays, staying back to fulfill their civic duties.” the group wrote.
Meanwhile, YIAGA made some recommendations over the now concluded election.
The group called for the immediate investigation and prosecution of polling officials and collation officers who are engaged in results manipulation and flagrant violations of the guidelines on results collation.
They also called on INEC to urgently clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results, especially election results from Oredo, Egor, Esan West and LGAs, stressing that INEC should issue detailed guidelines for exercising its powers to review declarations and returns made contrary to provisions of the Electoral Act and regulations and guidelines.
This, they said, should include procedures for receiving complaints, timeframe, format and who is eligible to submit complaints.
Lastly, they suggested integration of the IReV and electronic transmission of results into the electoral legal framework to confer legality on polling unit level results uploaded on the portal.