Preliminary findings by Reporters reveal that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) may have won the Edo 2016 election with over 90,000 thousand votes but the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
INEC, on September 30th, declared the candidate of the APC, Godwin Obaseki, as winner of the election that has been adjudged by domestic and foreign observers to be “violence free but not free and fair because of monetary inducements, falsification of final result and lacking in transparency”.
Many residents across Edo state have also doubted the accuracy of the result. The mood in Benin City, Uromi, Auchi and many cities across Edo state after the declaration was sober, not enthusiasm.
Faith Iguodala Okoro, a social media activist, captured the situation in one of her posts on Facebook “When Buhari who is not from Edo state was declared winner in 2015, Adams Oshiomhole threw a lavish party within 12 hours of the declaration, inviting Whiz Kid and the others. Why has Oshiomhole of all people not done the same thing since he was declared winner? A victory that cannot be celebrated is a theft – Obaseki is holding a stolen property and he knows it. We will retrieve it from the thief “
The PDP has officially rejected the result and has said it would go to the electoral Tribunal to challenge the election.
The Centre for Patriotic Leadership Initiative (CPLI), an incorporated leadership and rights advocacy NGO, led by Saintmoses Eromosele, in collaboration with Rev Leo Olu Martins and PDP youth leader, Engr Thaddeus Irabor, diaspora groups led by Dollar Bill and civil society groups in Edo state staged peaceful protests across Edo state with police protection, asking that the rightful winner should be declared.
According to preliminary information available about 30,000 votes are allegedly stolen from the PDP by so-called cancellation. Over 66,000 allegedly stolen from the PDP by way of accredited voters whose ballots were not counted. According to the PDP candidate, in a press briefing, he said that over 90% of the cancelled or invalidated votes are for the PDP.
The above figures have not included the figures that the APC got by way of inducement. That is another question altogether because that may only go to cancel the election because the voters induced actually voted. Inducement is a crime, but if the induced voters actually voted, and their ballots counted, that would have been another matter. The problem however is that despite the figures that the APC managed to get through inducements, they still came behind the PDP at the total collation but INEC allegedly went ahead to announce a fake result.
Another serious ground to suspect that INEC manufactured the result and rigged the result of the election is the fact that Young Democratic Party (YDP) a party that had a candidate for the gubernatorial election did not have their name or logo on the ballot paper. The more disturbing fact is that depsite the fact that the YDP did not have their logo in the ballot paper, the returning officer miraculously allocated votes to them in the results that he read on television. This has led many to believe that the result that was read on television was a complete fabrication.
The PDP is expected to appeal the decision within 21 days that the Tribunal is expected to be constituted. The Electoral Act gives the Tribunal the restriction to decide the case within 90 days. Thus, within three to four months, the case would have been decided.
