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An Independent National Electoral Commission officer uses a Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machine during the general election in Ibadan, Oyo State February 25, 2023. Photograph by Ayo Adams/CCIJ
Election officials on February 25, 2023, submitted a certified statement that 208 people voted in that day’s presidential election.On the surface, the document shows the All Progressives Congress won almost all the votes, with 202 ballots in its favour. For at least five polling sites in Obio-Akpor, a similar pattern emerged: Results were seemingly hastily overwritten, reversing votes for LP in favor of APC, which went on to win the presidential election.These documents are public records collected by Nigeria’s election oversight agency, the INEC. Each polling station in Nigeria is required to submit vote tallies that are then tabulated to determine election winners.
Some uploaded images of luxury goods, including one picture of a Chanel watch. Someone even uploaded a physics homework assignment calculating levers, gravity and maintaining equilibrium. That was the ward with the apparently altered voting tally that awarded 202 votes to APC and none to LP.Amadi said the choice to vote for Tinubu was influenced by the former Rivers state governor, Nyesom Wike.
In Obio-Akpor’s polling unit 4, the polling document results were altered to the point where more votes were cast than there were accredited voters. “It was rigged in favor of the APC; both supporters of the PDP and the APC worked together during the election,” he said. In Obio-Akpor’s polling unit 4, tally sheets were altered to the point where more votes were cast than there were accredited voters.
It is difficult to determine what happens to the APC total. It is unclear what was first written down before tippex and overwriting. A number three is overwritten with a five, for instance. The end result is that APC is reported as winning the neighbourhood with 153 votes. “From all intents and purposes, the alteration of Form E8 from polling units raises a serious question about the transparency and credibility of the elections,” said Mgbeahuruike from CDD. He said INEC should take “immediate action” and examine the documents and determine the effect these altered documents had on voting results.
Stamped documents done properly may look like this, with a stamp by the presiding polling officer at the bottom.This polling document from Lagos was submitted without the required official stamps. In Kano state, in the Fagge LGA, Sani Magaji, a supervisory presiding officer for voting, said he was deeply troubled by unstamped voting result documents.“There are issues of unstamped result sheets which should have been validated by the electoral officers, but they were not,” according to Magaji. “Also, if you can recall, there were reports of missing results from the Integrated Voter Register in most of the local governments here in Kano.
In Gombe state, Aminu Abubakar, an assistant presiding officer at the Tera polling station in Kumo east, recalled struggling to take an image of Form EC8A, used for counting votes.He was trying to use the BVAS machine, a hand-held Chinese-made computer that was supposed to improve voting and ensure greater transparency.The light was poor, the computer screen flickered. He said he knew the images would come out blurred – rendering the documents unreadable.
Polling workers told CCIJ about network problems elsewhere in Nigeria causing difficulties for BVAS machines, including in Kano and Kandua states. Voting results from at least 9,000 polling station results were not uploaded, according to INEC. The elections commission has not given a full accounting for why no results were filed by those polling units. In its post-election report from February 2024, INEC said poor internet connections were a factor. It noted in the report that the agency was able afterwards to calculate election results.
An Independent National Electoral Commission officer captures the photograph of a voter on a Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machine during the general election in Ibadan, Oyo State February 25, 2023.In Bauchi state, Abdullahi Isa Solo, a former chairman for two political parties, PDP and APC in the wards of Gumai Zaki, said voter verification was manipulated by several political leaders.
The residents asked not to be named for this story because they feared being attacked for speaking out.A CCIJ analysis of tally sheets identified results from six different Oru-East voting sites show unusual patterns. One other detail is striking: The numbers on all six tally sheets end in a 0, 2 or 5 – no other number.But the odds that 24 different numbers all ending with a 0, 2 or 5 is very slim – more than 1 in a billion.
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