An unexplained, additional 10,498 votes from one local government area are among new discrepancies emerging from the 2024 Edo governorship election. This was reported in an off-cycle governorship election analysis published on Friday.
Civic Hive, an accountability initiative under BudgIT, a civil society organisation, compiled and analysed the election results.
The analysis “uncovered …a number of over-voting particularly in Etsako East and other LGAs. Particularly, in Oredo LGA, there was an unexplained increase of total valid votes by 10,498, far more than what INEC announced. This can also be noticed in Egor LGA, where INEC announced total valid votes of 34,022 meanwhile the collation on IREV reveals that the number is 28,084”.
According to this analysis, INEC declared a total of 583,965 ballots cast. This was computed by adding the total number of valid and invalid votes in the election. The reported figure is 11,124 more than the 572,841 votes listed on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.
Civic Hive also noted that, at the time of the report, only 5 out of 18 local government results had been uploaded to the IReV portal. But this number accounted for 98% of the total election results counted.
The analysis showed that INEC declared 425,659 registered voters as opposed to the 403,765 displayed on IREV. This represents a 21,894 vote increase.
READ MORE: No Result Sheet, Vote Buying… Foul Trends From Edo 2024 Election
There were also notable discrepancies in party vote counts. For the All Progressives Congress (APC), INEC reported 291,667 votes, whereas IReV recorded 271,303. This means that the declared votes for the APC were 20,364 more than the uploaded results.
The opposite was the case for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). INEC declared 247,274 votes, while IREV showed 259,658, indicating a drop of 12,384 votes. With only 2% of the results remaining unposted, the analysis probed if this small percentage could account for the wide differences.
In specific polling units (PUs), the report flagged instances of potential overvoting and data inconsistencies. In Akoko Edo, one PU recorded 1,006 of 1,009 registered voters turning out, with 1,004 votes going to the APC and only 2 to the PDP.
In the same polling unit, agents of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) signed off on the results without any votes to their credits.
In Ovia South-West LGA, data from 16 PUs was incomplete. The analysis stated that the fields for the number of accredited and registered voters were left blank. This, according to the report, connoted reporting errors or possible manipulation.
Similar inconsistencies appeared in other local government areas including Esan Central, Owan East, Owan West, Etsako West, Egor and Oredo.
READ MORE: TABLE: Reasons 22 Polling Units in Edo Had No Election
Beyond the figures from this analysis, it can be deduced that the election was marred with several inconsistencies by mere observation.
FIJ reported incidents of vote-buying at several polling units in the Edo election. In one unit, only 213 voters were accredited, but the APC alone got 352 votes.
Vote observers had also described the election turnout as the poorest ever, with a significant percentage of the voting population staying off the polls.
The post ANALYSIS: Unexplained 10,498 Votes From One LGA, More Edo Election Discrepancies Emerge appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.