The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Edo State has protested the alleged inflation of results in favour of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Saturday’s governorship election in the state.
It had been reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, conducted an off-cycle governorship election in the state on September 21, 2024.
Following the elections, PDP governors at a press conference protested the collation of results in 12 local governments.
Briefing the press in the State Government’s House on Sunday, the State chairman of the party, Tony Aziegbemi alleged that the manipulation of the collation of the results to favour APC cut- across all the 18 Local Government Areas.
Aziegbemi alleged that there are discrepancies in the results uploaded on the INEC Irev, forms EC8C and EC8B.
He, however, urged the chairman of the Commission, Mahmood Yakubu to review the collated results before the final declaration.
He specifically faulted the results in Akoko-Edo, Etsako West and Egor Local Government Areas where the party lost to the main opposition party in the state, APC.
According to him, “It has come to our attention that the Electoral Officers appointed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the Edo State Governorship election, made entries that are totallywere 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 local government area, a simple collation of all the votes recorded in the polling unit results uploaded on the IREV shows that the APC obtained 25,010 votes while 34,847 votes were recorded in the EC8C declared by the LGA Returning Officer.