There was a mild drama on Monday at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, venue for the National Collation Centre for the last Saturday’s presidential election when Dino Melaye, the agent of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rejected the results from Ekiti State.
Melaye, a former senator who represented Kogi-West said the results were marred by over-voting and the course law which stipulates the cancellation of election results and called for results collated from states by uploaded to the screen at the collation centre.
INEC had on Sunday declared that Bola Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate polled a total of 201,494 to defeat his revival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored 89,554.
Also, Peter Obi of the Labour Party scored 11,397 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party candidate garnered 264 votes.
But the drama started when Melaye grabbed the microphone just when the result from Kwara was about to be presented and complained that there was a discrepancy of an increase of 887 in the total number of figures from Ekiti State.
He said: “I worked on the results as presented and I discovered that we have 987,647 registered voters in Ekiti and 301,558 accredited. The results were presented yesterday, APC had 201, 494. If you subtract that from 301,558, what you have left is 100,064.
“Out of this 100,064, PDP scored 89,554. If you subtract that from the balance of 100,064, what is left is 10,510 and now it was also recorded that the Labour Party had 12,397 when the total left is 10,510. Meaning an over figure of 887.
“Apart from this 887 surplus, we have not calculated the votes of other political parties. Because you will recall that yesterday he told us that ADC scored 1,027.
“You will see from that presentation yesterday that the figure did not add up, there was over voting and the number of votes outnumber the number of accredited votes and we know exactly what the law says concerning that. I move that should be considered because Ekiti cannot stand.”
Another PDP, agent and former governor of Imo state Emeka Ihedioha alleged the election results were being manipulated at the collation levels and demand for a more transparent process.
He said: “Mr chairman we are talking about the transparency of this process and we are confident in this process. I have cause to speak with your commissioners this morning about the abuse of the processes.
“Chairman as we speak; it is clear to us that in the course of collation, collation officers have been forced by people who think that have power to undo the results.”
The agent of the Action Alliance, Kenneth Udeze also agreed with his PDP counterparts saying: “This calculation and position of my colleagues here is, Action Alliance has gone through that same figure and we got the same similar position.
“We will like the commission to look at it and the Ekiti State result should be cancelled for over voting based on our calculation.”
Babatunde Ogala, the APC agent told the opposition parties that their demands were no longer tenable as the result have already been declared at the state level and they can only take their case to election petition.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria said: “I think the law is clear that when a result has been declared, we should petition, if need be. Ekiti was declared yesterday, we were asked for observation, and if that had been done any party that feel troubled should prepared its petition. Where we are today, I want to say with all respect that the business of now is Kwara. We cannot go back.”
However, Mahmood Yakubu, the INEC chairman maintained that the commission stand by the result declared by the collation officer for Ekiti State, Akeem Olawale Lasisi, who is the Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila Orangun, Osun State.
“I still insist that the figure presented by the state collection officer for the presidential election for Ekiti state of the total number of accredited voters is 315,058. This is what is on the spreadsheet that we screened yesterday. And this is also what is on the actual result manual recorded by the scope and signed by the PDP agent and agents of other political parties back in Ekiti state.
“But having said that, I’ve taken note of your observations, let us make progress on that one. But what we have here is exactly what I’ve said. And any other figure that is at variance with this one cannot supersede the official result presented. Let’s make progress, Yakubu,” said.
But Melaye continued on top of his voice and gesticulating that he must heard, while Yakubu calmly told him that; “you are now disrupting the process.”
Addressing journalist after the adjournment of the collation later in the day, the former lawmaker insisted that the INEC chairman must show how results were uploaded in all states, saying the battle was for the soul of Nigeria and he and his party will not surrender.
“A few minutes ago, we raised the issue of the fact that in accordance with the provision of the Electoral Act, Section 60 and section 64 of the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended) that there will be transmission of results from the polling units. And then INEC chairman has repeatedly told Nigerians that there will be transmission of a lot of results from polling units directly to the server.
“We find out that this has not been done. INEC failed in this regard. And when this issue was raised today, supported by other party agents, the national chairman of INEC evaded vehemently because what Section 47(3) emphasises is that wherever that the BVAS failed, if they cannot get a replacement, election should be cancelled in those areas.
“And we have seen from the presentation of the results from yesterday that some places were cancelled as a result of bypassing BVAS. So the only way to detect that BVAS have been bypassed is for us to see the uploaded results.
“And we insisted that the chairman should show us here now the uploaded results state by state just like the way they are displaying the collated results they are presenting and that is the only way to test the veracity and authenticity of this results.
“If not, we are only here to endorse the fraud that has been done from the units to the world to the states. We are not here to rubber stamp infractions. We are not here to rubber stamp the abnormalities that have been done. We are here to check them but the national chairman of INEC is not given us opportunity to question what they are doing.
“We have just met now with other political parties and we are going to make a presentation by the time we resume and if they insist that they are not going to respond to us then you will see the action we will take.
“We will not allow it. We have suffered a lot of pain in this country, suffered poverty, hunger, kidnapping, killings. We will not allow a continuation of failure. We must make sure that the right thing is done.
“Nigerians are watching, the world is watching, even the dead are watching to see what INEC will do, but the battle to make sure that only authentic results will be announced here today is a battle of no retreat, no surrender,” Melaye added.
Meanwhile, results from three more states have so far been presented at the National Collation Centre. They are Kwara, Osun and Ondo.
In Kwara state, the presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu scored 263, 572 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of PDP with 136, 909 and is followed by Peter Obi of Labour Party who got 31, 166 and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) who garnered 3,141 votes
For Osun, the PDP candidate scored the highest number of votes with 354,366 and is closely followed by the APC standard bearer, who obtained 343, 945; the Labour Party candidate got 23, 283 while that of the NNPP collected 713
The result from Ondo showed that
APC’s Tinubu scored 369,924 votes above Atiku of PDP with 136,909 and is followed by Obi of Labour Party who got 44,405 while Kwankwaso of the NNPP garnered 930 votes.
