The Edo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has officially rejected the results of the state governorship election announced thus far by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
According to the current results, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has secured victory in 11 out of 18 local government areas, while the PDP has won in six.
In a letter addressed to the INEC Chairman in Abuja, the state chairman of the PDP, Dr Tony Aziegbemi, claimed that the announced votes had been inflated to favour the APC.
Titled “Re: Protest against manufactured vote entries and unjust inflation of APC votes and deduction of PDP votes in the collation of results of Edo State Governorship Election held on 21 September 2024,” the letter details alleged discrepancies in the results from several polling units in three local governments: Akoko Edo, Egor, and Etsako West.
The letter states, “It has come to our attention that the Electoral Officers appointed by the INEC for the conduct of the Edo State Governorship election made entries that are totally different from the actual results as uploaded on the INEC IREV, thereby unjustly inflating votes in favour of the APC and deducting the votes of the PDP.”
In Akoko Edo LGA, for example, the letter alleges that the APC recorded 25,010 votes according to the IREV, while the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer showed 34,847 votes. For the PDP, 18,620 votes were uploaded, but only 15,865 were reported on the EC8C.
In Ward 9 of Akoko Edo, discrepancies were highlighted where the total votes for the APC were reported as 2,350 on the IREV, yet 9,104 were entered in the EC8B result. The PDP received 1,359 votes on the IREV, while only 633 were reported.
The letter further details similar irregularities in Egor and Etsako West LGAs, claiming that the results were either inflated or misreported, with PDP agents excluded from the collation process in some instances.
The PDP concluded by urging INEC to immediately re-collate and recompute the actual results from the aforementioned local government areas, stressing that the guidelines and regulations must be followed to ensure transparency and credibility in the electoral process.