CLAIM: INEC has uploaded National Assembly election results on the IReV portal but has yet to do so for presidential elections.
VERDICT: False
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Reactions worldwide have followed the February 25th presidential election in Africa’s biggest democracy, which produced Bola Tinubu as Nigeria’s next leader. Mr Tinubu was the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Major opposition parties in the fiercely contested polls have refused to concede defeat, and the two closest contestants have formally challenged the results in court.
Mr Tinubu, 70, scored 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all the candidates. His closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), scored 6,984,520 votes to emerge second in the election, while Labour Party’s Peter Obi got a total of 6,101,533.
PDP’s Mr Atiku called the result “a rape of democracy” after getting 29 per cent of the vote, and Labour Party’s Mr Obi, who got 25 per cent, told supporters they had been “robbed” of victory and said the elections is “worst in Nigeria’s recent history.”
The opposition parties are lamenting the inability of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload screenshots of polling station results to a central portal, IReV, created for the purpose.
INEC’s guideline for the election explicitly states that results from each of the more than 176,000 polling stations will be electronically transmitted to the commission’s collation system and also uploaded to its website. But that was not possible with INEC apologising for “technical glitches.”
As Mr Obi and Mr Atiku continue their challenge of the presidential elections results for not being uploaded on IReV timely, they have ironically endorsed and celebrated some of the election results at the national legislative levels favourable to their parties. The Elections of the federal lawmakers were simultaneously held on the same day as the presidential election.
For instance, on 8 March, Mr Obi organised a dinner for the elected legislative members of the Labour Party. “This evening, I hosted the welcome dinner for Labour Party Senators and Members of the House of Representatives in Abuja,” he wrote on Twitter with pictures attached from the event.
The senator-elect of the FCT, Ireti Kingibe, also posted: “The elected Senators and House of Representative members of our great party came together to dine and celebrate with each other in harmony. Thank you @PeterObi, for hosting us.”
Then, On 10 March, the PDP National Youth Coordinator, Abba Kadade, led the party’s members-elect of the House of Representatives in Kaduna State to meet Atiku.
The Labour Party won 40 seats in the National Assembly, 6 Senates and 34 House of Representative positions. On the other hand, the PDP got 29 seats in the Senate and 102 in the House of Representatives. The APC won most of the seats, with 57 in the Senate and 162 in the House of Representatives.
The results of the Senate and House of Representatives elections are expected to be uploaded and published on the IReV portal at the end of voting. Some public commentators have claimed that INEC has since uploaded the national legislative-level election results.
In a widely circulated video, Emmanuel Ogebe, the Coordinator of Washington-based Democratic Election Monitoring Observers (DEMO), said: “Just to show you the extent of the mischief that occurred, the result of National Assembly elections which happened at the same time simultaneously with presidential elections results were able to be uploaded on IReV but the presidential election results were not uploaded.
“Till this moment, the results have not been completely uploaded,” Mr Ogebe said at an event on 8 March in Washington.
Then a Twitter user Daniel Okezue wrote: “I told you that @inecnigeria could not be trusted. I told you that elections are not rigged at PUs but at collation centres. Whatever makes you able to upload National Assembly results but couldn’t upload the presidential is the beginning of rigging. INEC has to answer for this.”
One of Mr Obi’s special advisers, Valentine Ozigbo, wrote: “INEC officials uploaded the results of the National Assembly elections to the server without hitches.”
But how true is the claim that INEC has uploaded the National Assembly elections results on IReV but has yet to do so for the presidential election?
Verification
PREMIUM TIMES extracted data on the INEC portal on Monday, 27 March, and we discovered that out of 176,846, INEC has uploaded 166,656 polling unit results from presidential elections. This represents 94.24 per cent. The electoral commission is still expected to upload 10,190 polling units results.
On the other hand, INEC has uploaded 150,281 polling units results for senatorial elections on the IReV portal, representing 84.97 per cent of the total.
As for the House of Representatives, the electoral commission has uploaded 152,055 polling units results from federal constituencies on IReV. This represents 85.98 per cent of the results.
A review of the results by PREMIUM TIMES shows that as of Monday, 27 March, only 48 per cent of FCT senatorial elections results were published on IReV. INEC has published only 1,356 out of 2,822 polling unit results in the FCT senatorial district.
Similarly, only 78 per cent of senatorial election results in Akwa Ibom South are uploaded on IReV. PDP’s Ekong Samson is the senator-elect of the Akwa Ibom Senatorial South district election. The electoral commission uploaded only 996 out of 1275 polling units results in the senatorial district.
Then in Delta Central, INEC published 1399 out of 2180 polling units results of the senatorial elections. This represents 64.17 per cent of the final results that produced APC’s Ede Dafinone.
Conclusion
Using official data from Nigeria’s electoral umpire, INEC, we found that out of 176,846, INEC has uploaded 166,656 polling unit results from presidential elections. This represents 94.24 per cent. On the other hand, INEC has published 150,281 (84.97 per cent) of the total results of senatorial elections and 152,055 (85.98 per cent) of the House of Representatives elections results uploaded on the IReV portal as of Monday, 27 March.
Therefore it is false and misleading to say INEC has uploaded the results of national legislative elections but has yet to publish the presidential elections results. The data shows that INEC has uploaded and published more presidential election results on IReV than national assembly elections.
The researcher produced this fact-check per the DUBAWA 2023 Kwame Kari Kari fellowship partnership with premium times to facilitate the ethos of truth in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.
