Following the announcement of the Presidential election results, yesterday, YIAGA Watching the Vote, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to provide clarification on the cancelled ballots and the discrepancies between registered voters as announced before the election and during collation.
The group made the call while briefing the media on the 2019 presidential election results, noting that the clarity may not necessarily affect the overall outcome of the elections.
According to the chair, YIAGA Africa Watching The Vote, Dr Hussaini Abdu, “Overall, the percentage of cancelled ballots announced by INEC was 3.3 percent of all registered voters which is four times higher than the rate from 2015 when registered voters in cancelled polling units was less than 1 per cent of all registered votes”.
He noted that states which recorded the cancellation of ballots exceeding 4 per cent of registered voters included Rivers (22.7 per cent), Nasarawa (9.5 per cent), Akwa Ibom
(8.5 per cent), Cross River (8.0 per cent), Plateau (5.7 per cent), Kogi (5.2 per cent), Benue (4.9 per cent), and Kaduna (4.7 per cent).
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“In Rivers State, a total of 942, 368 ballots were cancelled or more than a quarter of registered voters, while In Nasarawa State, it is evident that the cancellation of ballots affected the election outcome for that state, though not the national results as it disenfranchised a very significant number of voters in the state,” he said.
He stated that according to the PVT estimates, prior to cancellations PDP had a majority of the votes share in Nasarawa and after the cancellations PDP and APC had relatively equal vote shares.
He, however assured that the overall number of cancelled ballots could not have changed the election outcome and should not call into question the accuracy of the announced results.
Dr Abdullah also noted that the discrepancies between registered voters as announced before the election and during collation, adding that prior to the February 23, 2019 elections, INEC clearly communicated that 84,004,084 voters were registered and publicised state by state breakdowns of this figure.
He however alleged that “the number of registered voters announced by the state returning officers at the national collation centre did not align with the figures published before the election.”
