Fresh facts have emerged showing how the Labour Party (LP) Presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Gregory Obi, won the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, at all military installations and environs in the country where thugs and hooligans do not have access or free reign.
It also shows the spread, cosmopolitan nature, and the breaking of ethnic and religious barriers of the LP standard bearer’s voters ostensibly in response to his campaign messages that he should not be voted for because of his tribe and religion but to look at competence, character, antecedents, and capacity.
There was widespread violence across the country during both the Presidential and gubernatorial elections on February 25th and March 18 leading to the de-franchising of many voters, suppression of votes, intimidation of voters as well as underage voting.
In Lagos and some other states, there were tragic cases of killing and maiming of voters on Election Day. At the weekend, Edo State LP lost a member Mrs. Elizabeth Obie who was shot by thugs at a polling unit in Oghehe Health Center, Ward 9 in Ikpoba Okah Local Government Area on Election Day during the February 25th Presidential election
An independent, in-depth research work conducted by a Nigerian scholar, Dr. Obioma C. Nwankwo, entitled “Assessing the likely winner of the 2023 Nigeria presidential election using the voting patterns at military installations and environs“, took a scientific path to analyze the elections by selecting only the results from military formations across Nigeria’s 36 states.
The researcher said the study was prompted by his sure thinking military installations were locations where nobody could attempt ballot snatching or result sheet mutilation in the Polling Units.
According to findings from his results, Peter Obi of LP won the presidential election even in places like Bauchi.
The election in Nigeria, which had been adjudged by local and international observers as faulty and deplorable, was fraught with manipulation of results, underage voting, voter intimidation, and voter suppression.
The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the electronic transmission of results from Polling Units was introduced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) aimed at minimizing rigging.
The failure to electronically transmit the results from polling units during the recent presidential election as promised by INEC, however, led to the widespread belief of result-tampering making it difficult to know the true number of votes scored by the candidates.
Dr. Nwankwo, therefore, deployed the voting patterns at locations where the integrity of the voting results can be guaranteed as a surrogate to estimate the true votes scored by the candidates.
According to him, the voting results from locations where it is almost impossible for voter suppression, intimidation, underage voting and the manipulation of results to occur could be used to estimate the true number of votes scored by the candidates.
He said: “This method is not perfect, but could provide the best estimate in a system that is fraught with manipulations.
“Military installations and their immediate surroundings meet these criteria because they are arguably the best locations where the integrity of the election results can be trusted.
“The military is also populated by the different ethnic groups that constitute the federation and should, therefore, to an extent, reflect the opinions of different ethnicities.
“Additionally, the political views of the communities that host these installations should also be captured because these polling units are not exclusive to the military.
“The official INEC result-reporting website was used for this study. The results from military installations and the immediate environment were obtained as follows:
Visit the INEC result reporting page: https://www.inecelectionresults.ng/elections and select the presidential election.
Then go to each state, local government, and ward.
Look through all the polling units contained in a ward for keywords that denote a military installation or proximity to one. These keywords are words like the army, navy, air force, barracks, and NAOWA (Nigerian Army Officers’ Wives Association).
Document the local government, ward, polling unit code, name of the polling unit, and the number of votes scored by LP, APC, and PDP for the polling units that meet the inclusion criteria. The number of votes scored by the NNPP was also recorded for Kano State.
An alternative website, https://cvr.inecnigeria.org/election_results/findByCode, can also be used to check for election results if the polling unit code is known.”
Out of the total of 176,846 polling units, some 167,443 results have been uploaded as of the time of this publication.
Nwankwo continued: “The process involves browsing through almost all the polling units.
“It is possible that a few polling units with military installations were missed during the collection of data. However, none was intentionally excluded.
“The results of the voting results at military installations and the immediate surroundings and those declared by INEC for the entire state are presented in the table below:
The total shows that Peter Obi (LP) scored 1,694.83 percent of votes across the 36 states and the FCT, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (APC) got 787.99 percent, while Atiku Abubakar (PDP) went home with 574.12 percent votes.
When juxtaposed with the result announced by INEC, however, the outcome is startling.
The INEC results show that Peter Obi (LP) scored 1,033.56 percent of votes across the 36 states and the FCT, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (APC) got 1,307.61 percent, while Atiku Abubakar (PDP) went home with 1,046.15 percent votes.
Diran Onifade
Head, obi-Datti Media