Terrible! INEC Confirms Delta Governor Scored More Votes Than Number Of Voters

The Delta State governorship election petition tribunal,
sitting in Asaba, has admitted four key documents, including card readers’
accreditation report, tendered by officials of the Independent National
Electoral Commission.

The accreditation report submitted by INEC showed that the
number of accredited voters for the April 11 governorship election in Delta
state was lower than the results announced by electoral officials after the
polls.

Two INEC officials – Assistant Director, ICT Department from
Abuja headquarters and Chief Planning Officer, Delta State office – were
directed to give testimony on the conduct of the April 11 election, following
the request by the All Progressives Congress and its candidate, Emerhor Otega.

The Delta election, won by Ifeanyi Okowa of the Peoples
Democratic Party, is being challenged by the APC and Mr. Otega.

Apart from the accreditation report, other documents
tendered by the INEC officials at the commencement of hearing Wednesday,
included, manual for election officials 2015; INEC’s April 2, 2015 press
statement making accreditation through use of card readers only mandatory for
the governorship elections; and guidelines and regulations for the conduct of
2015 general elections.

In their testimony, the INEC officials said that “all
documents tendered were duly certified by INEC, that the card reader has three
(3) functions to with; identification of voters, verification of PVC holder and
voter’s authentication on Election Day.”

Further, the tribunal was told that “the card readers
recorded no sustained failure during the governorship election in delta state
and accredited numbers of voters as at April 29th was 709,000 and at the
expiration of the shutting down of data upload, the final tally was 715,393.”

But on April 13, Delta State INEC had put the figure of
accredited voters at 1,017,796, exceeding actual accreditation number revealed
by the admitted report obtained from INEC central server.

In Nigeria’s technology driven 2015 elections, INEC central
server generated data real time from card readers across polling units. This
was to detect malpractices, especially inflation of numbers.

Announcing Mr. Okowa as the winner of the election on April
13, the Returning Officer, Bio Nyananyo, said the PDP candidate polled 724,680
votes, which translated to 14,980 votes higher than actual number of accredited
voters.

Admissibility of the documents and ordering of INEC staff to
give testimony on the conduct of the election had been strongly objected by Mr.
Okowa, but was dismissed by the tribunal.

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