Presidential election: INEC yet to upload results from 9403 polling units yet declared March 1 winner

Results obtained from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) results viewing portal (IREV) shows that as at May 2, 2023, the electoral body has yet to upload results from 9403 polling units, despite hastily declaring the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the winner of the election.

The presidential election, which was held on 25th February 2023, saw Tinubu declared as the winner on March 1, 2023.

However, out of the 176,846 polling units, the results of 167,443 only, have been submitted to IREV under the caption “Presidential election – 2023-02-25 – Presidential”.

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The data shows that only 94.68 per cent of the total presidential election results have been uploaded so far.

Based on previous judgements by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the results from 9403 yet to be offloaded may be sufficient to cancel the election results.

Assuming that each polling unit holds 500 eligible voters, the total number of votes not captured will be 4,701,500 votes.

In the meantime, according to results obtained from IREV, Tinubu scored 5,406,769 votes, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 4,142,459, while the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Gregory Obi, garnered 4,026,117 votes.

Meanwhile, the results declared by INEC says that Tinubu scored 8,805,654, Atiku Abubakar — 6,984,520, and Peter Obi — 6,102,756.

As is evident, the difference between Tinubu’s winning votes against Atiku is 1,264,310 and 1,380,652 against Obi respectively, based on IREV, or 1,821,134 votes against Atiku and 2,702,898 against Obi respectively, based on INEC declaration.

Summarily, as hearings on the petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal over the controversial February 25 election get underway, INEC could not produce the results of 9403 polling units, hence cannot defend it at the Tribunal.

Evidence points to the allegation that more than 9,000 polling units where results were either manufactured or manipulated.

Source within INEC shows that the commission is finding it difficult to reconcile the figures it announced during the presidential election because the original results are no longer available.

A source claimed that INEC is presently in possession of only altered results.

The unfolding crisis unfolded when INEC controversially shut down its server during the presidential election, making it difficult for the commission’s staff to upload results using the BiModal Accreditation Voter System (BVAS) devices.

An already critical situation was made worse when it obtained the court’s permission to format the BVAS devices for the governorship election which held on March 18 amidst protests.

INEC is, therefore, facing an uphill challenge of defending the results it announced during the election without showing evidence from the results given to them by the presiding officer as it heads to Election Petition Tribunal.

It could, however, be remembered that elections were not held in 240 polling units because there were no registered voters there which reduced the total number of polling units in the country to 176,606 from 176,846