A Civil Society group, Yiaga Africa, on Monday, expressed disappointment at the conduct of last weekend’s governorship election in Edo State.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday night declared the APC candidate as the winner of the election ahead of his Peoples Democratic Party (PD) rival, Asue Ighodalo
Okpebholo, 54, polled 291,667 votes to edge out Ighodalo who garnered 247,274 votes in the keenly contested election.
The Labour Party flag bearer, Olumide Akpata, finished in third place with 22,763 votes.
In a statement released signed by the Chairperson of the 2024 Edo Election Mission, Dr. Aisha Abdullahi, and its Executive Director, Samson Itodo, Yiaga Africa lamented that the election failed the integrity test with a number of incidents recorded during the exercise.
It cited the collation process which reportedly led to the manipulation of the election results.
The group said its conclusion was aided by the deployment of Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology for the election.
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The report read: “While key processes such as accreditation, voting, counting, and recording of results at the polling unit substantially complied with procedures, the results collation process was compromised by the actions of some biased INEC officials in connivance with other actors.
“This manipulation severely undermines the overall integrity of the election.
“Yiaga Africa’s estimates are based on official results announced at the polling unit, from a representative random sample of polling units. As highlighted in our pre-election report, Yiaga Africa will amongst other factors consider the quality of Election Day processes in assessing whether the 2024 Edo governorship satisfies the electoral integrity test. In this regard, Yiaga Africa considered the integrity of accreditation, voting, counting, and collation of results.
“INEC consistently applied its guidelines in managing the accreditation and voting process in a significant number of polling units. Despite some isolated incidents, Post-Election Statement on the September 2024 Edo State Governorship Election of inadequate election materials, the BVAS machines functioned optimally, and all voters in the queue by 2:30 pm were allowed to vote, despite the late opening of polls. The polling officials uploaded polling unit results on the IReV on time, 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.”
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